A/N: IT'S FINALLY HERE! This is my contribution to Resbang 2016, and I am so thrilled to finally get this AU off my chest. Huge, HUGE thanks to my #Jortsquad beta server (Silly-twin-stars, zxanthe, Justifiably, makapedia, professor-maka, fabulousanima, marshofsleep, and adulterclavis), the people in which helped me grow as a writer and a person in ways I don't think they even know.

MEGA huge shout-out to my artists on this piece! I was lucky enough to have two, and the art for both can be found on the Resbang masterpost found by searching 'resbang masterpost 2016' on google. (Silly FFN, not letting us link) One of Jo's two art pieces is the cover for this fic! Please go flail all over their amazingness, and listen to Amber's voice acting from a scene in chapter six! With that, enjoy!

Warnings: Depression, some suicidal ideation, some gore, major character death

Darkness coats the inside of his eyes, slithers down his throat, runs tar-like through his veins. He can hear it catching up to him, long, crackling, inexorable footsteps beating a measured counterpoint to his frantic heart. Small hands materialize from the shadows to grope at his face and shove fingers down his throat, choking him with the taste of ash and dust.

Sprint. Jump. Duck. The world is reduced to spurts of action as his thoughts scatter like birds from a field, even as the ear-wrenching sound of squealing wires gets louder behind him. Terror propels him through rotting skeletons and over piles of dead crows, every instinct screaming that if he doesn't move faster, he'll meet a fate far worse than death.

He's always too late.

Bursting from a thicket with bleeding clefs for leaves, Soul runs to the edge of a sheer cliff, small rocks skittering into the inky abyss below. The world goes quiet, the kind of sharp silence after a gunshot, and then he's being strangled by hands with piano keys for fingers, black sludge leaking through the spaces between them.

"Why?" the voice whispers hoarsely, as it always does. "Why me, but not you?"

Scrabbling in vain against the ivory hands that hold him suspended, Soul cries, "I don't know! I don't know, I don't know, I don't know!" Despair shoves the terror out of his system and he goes limp in the creature's grip, will to fight back trickling away at the sudden realization of who it is that hunts him so methodically.

"You abandoned us," it rasps, carrying Soul to the edge of the cliff.

The world yawns below him as he's dangled over the cliff face, panic coursing through him while he squirms and twists so he can make one last plea. "I didn't mean to! Wes, please!"

Maggots skitter through the exposed bones of Wes's cheeks, empty sockets leering where blue eyes once regarded him so gently. Jutting between the tendons in his neck is a violin bow, the one pictured in the papers on the night he won the Death City Symphony Competition, and Soul has to swallow another sob because that was the photo they used in his obituary, too.

Flies buzz around his face as Wes says, "Sorry isn't good enough," and drops him.

All Soul can hear is the low growling roar of a huge waterfall, and suddenly he's plunged underwater, choking as liquid pours into his lungs. Except it isn't water, not really, and it's only with his last bit of consciousness that he realizes he's swimming in blood as black as the dark side of the moon.

A loud buzz jolts him awake, overwhelming horror still with him while he thrashes under the covers and nearly chokes himself with his sheet. Heart pounding, he sees his phone screen brighten briefly before going black. It takes a bit of untwisting to get himself into a position to grab it before he can tiredly swipe into his messages. Sure enough, there is a very loud text from Blake.

[[YO. DON'T IGNORE ME AGAIN. MEET AT FOUNTAIN PARK IN 30. LIZ HAS A SURPRISE FOR US]]

Frowning, Soul rolls back over, fatigue setting in again now that the adrenaline is wearing off. And here he thought he was doing so well, going a whole two days without a nightmare. Looking at the text again, Soul figures he has about ten minutes before he has to leave the house to make it there on time, which means he has eight minutes to stare at his ceiling and wonder again why he's still here.

His room is dark - as dark as he can get it in the Nevada sunshine - and covered in shrapnel from the last five and a half years. Bits of staff paper are scattered about the floor beneath heaps of clothing, small remnants from a time when he actually enjoyed music. Buried under old takeout containers and more crumpled paper, his desk stands tiredly with odd socks dotting the space where his computer chair should go. The chair itself broke a while back, back when his room was still clean, and Soul thumbs the scars on his wrist from when he flung it out the window.

But that was a long time ago.

Sighing, he rolls onto his side and sits up, rubbing the perpetual tension knot at the base of his neck. It doesn't take long to dig through what he figures is the clean pile of laundry (it doesn't reek, anyway), and soon he's wandering down long, echoing hallways to the garage where his motorcycle is parked.

Summer has come as it always does to Death City, with plenty of desert wildflowers and light, dusty breezes. Small succulents peek out of the cracks in the pavement as Soul speeds along on back roads, not paying nearly enough attention to the speed limit nor his proximity to other vehicles. Some days his gaze lingers just beyond the guardrail, where land surrenders to air, and he lets his body ever so slightly drift. But then the sun will stab at his eyes or a car will honk its horn and he'll wistfully turn back into his lane. Another day, then.

The specter of a new school year haunts him - July has bled into August, and he's only now mustering the energy to see his friends. Soon he'll be surrounded by the noise and the movement and the pointless posturing of his peers, and for what? Knowledge? Responsibility? Societal expectations of success? He's long since stopped caring about all that.

A red light stops him at an intersection and he glances down at the pavement so the sun doesn't completely blind him, balancing his weight on one leg while his bike idles. Maybe it's the pattern in the thin oil trail marking the ground, or maybe it's the way the liquid catches the light and shimmers red-black in the Nevada sun, but he's flung back to a different patch of road echoing with sirens and uniformed men.

Soul had been told he needed to "identify" his family, whatever that meant, but the officer who'd brought him there remained silent, glancing at Soul with something like sympathy every now and then as they'd woven their way through people and vehicles.

The moment Soul saw the overturned 18 wheeler, he knew.

Things became hazy after that, his memory shrouded for self-defense, but he remembers how the officer smelled like spearmint and cigarettes and the way the moon looked like a scythe blade, sharp and unforgiving as it illuminated what was left of his family.

He'd shoved his way through the uniforms guarding the scene so he could throw himself on the ground next to his parents and Wes, fisting his hands in their tattered shirts, yelling for them to wake up. Their blood looked like finger paint as he saw it drip from his hands after officers dragged him from the scene, cooling against the skin of his palms while he watched it dry and flake away.

They'd still been warm.

Inhale, hold, exhale. Soul grips the handlebars tighter until he can barely feel his fingernails digging into the worn leather, until the sun on the back of his neck beats a searing reprise across his pale skin. The light turns green and he's gone, accelerating as fast as he can to get away from echoing sirens and that panicked, helpless feeling he's never quite been able to shake.

It's not long before he's woven his way through the densest part of town and begun circling the block to look for a spot to park. After a few minutes he sees one by the entrance to the park and rushes for it, belatedly remembering to stow his helmet before he leaves. The small voice in the back of his mind, with a razor-edge Cheshire Cat smile and a cadence like a skipping record, whispers why bother with the helmet at all?

He sets the voice aside.

The park is a sprawling tangle of walking paths interspersed with drought-resistant greenery and a few carefully managed water features. He hardly walks five steps along the main path before he hears the resonant timbre of a violin, light and playful like sun dancing on water. The sound soothes him somehow, intrigues him, and he finds himself turning to follow it deeper into the park. As he listens, the bright tones painting a forest of blues and greens and yellows in his mind, he's reminded of Wes. Wes and his perfect pitch, his inability to do anything other than coax the most beautiful noises from any instrument that graced his hands.

But then the tone changes, turns from crisp lines to raw brush strokes, jagged around the edges, and it stirs something in his soul he thought had died years ago. With each rising crescendo and unpredictable twist of melody, he begins to feel like he knows this person, like he's caught a glimpse into their mind from the way they stutter their bow and use vibrato where none is traditional. There is something challenging and comforting about it, and he can't quite put his finger on the reason why.

That is, until he sees her.

Sunlight shines off her ash blonde hair, weaving bright highlights into long, wispy strands that hang halfway down her back. She's facing away from him at the moment, but he'd recognize that pleated skirt and those fearsome combat boots anywhere after years spent walking two steps behind her. She has one foot up on the fountain, resting a violin in the crook of her neck while she weaves her bow through the air like a magic wand. It might just be magic, Soul thinks, because he's never heard someone play the violin quite so dangerously, quite so fiercely, before. He wants to sit and listen, to hear more from this person whose music shimmers behind his eyelids like fireworks, but he doesn't get the chance.

She turns around then, wind blowing her hair back, tears quietly streaming down her face as evergreen eyes meet his.

One final, drawn out note hovers in the air around them, settling around his shoulders like a lead mantle. Anger and a particularly personal kind of embarrassment roil in his gut at the sight of her here, in the flesh, after so many years spent wondering how much of her abrupt departure was his fault.

But he's still staring, and time is still moving, so he clears his throat and somehow says, "Hey, Maka. It's been a while."

Some emotion he can't quite place flickers behind her eyes as she scrubs at them, hopping down from the fountain on unsteady legs before walking over to him. Why she'd be crying here is beyond him, and he ruthlessly squashes the immediate urge to ask her - he's done caring. The last time he'd seen her was when she'd grabbed Wes and had a lengthy discussion in hushed tones while he sat at the piano and tried to ignore the fact that he was, once again, left out of their private little world.

It was, after all, always Wes she was chasing after.

"Soul?" she asks when she's close enough to speak, close enough to touch. Her voice is as strong and warm as he remembers, and he doesn't miss the concern that ripples across her features when she gets a good look at him. "Oh my goodness, Soul, I almost didn't recognize you! Blake and Liz told me you'd gotten lanky, but I didn't think you'd look quite so...skeletal." She reaches over and suddenly calloused fingers are skating over the bags under his eyes, hovering over the gaps in his sunken cheeks, tugging lightly at his perpetual scowl.

Keep it cool. Lock it down. He's used to these kinds of observations, used to being regarded as pitiful and unable to care for himself while others come up with the best way for him to get better. Sure, he doesn't really have an appetite most of the time, and okay, he doesn't do much about it, but what does that matter to her? They used to hang out, emphasis on used to, and without Wes to be the glue between them, Soul doesn't understand why she even wants to talk to him.

He shrugs out of her reach and shoves his hands in his pockets. "Whatever."

Her smile falters, though there's a bit of that old fire behind her eyes that he doesn't miss. It's the same whipcrack hardness he'd seen every time she took the stage and beguiled the audience with expertly executed layers of sound as she added her mark to the melody with a jumping bow and nimble fingers. She'd always pause for one, two, three beats at the end of particularly challenging songs, cocking her head to the side and staring towards the ceiling with a clenched jaw and combustion in her eyes before exhaling and stalking behind the curtain. Soul used to wonder what she'd been looking for, but now he doesn't care. It probably died with Wes.

"Well, Blake and Liz should be here soon to bring us to lunch, so I'd like to maybe catch up a bit before they get here."

He blinks. "Blake and Liz?" His thoughts flash to the text he received that morning and he gapes a little. "You're the surprise Liz had?"

"Aw man, way to ruin my fun!" Turning around, Soul sees Liz striding towards them, dressed in torn jeans and her trademark cowboy boots. "I wanted to be the one to reunite the Wittle Symphony."

"Look at my favorite music dweebs, all in one place! It almost brings a tear to my eye." Blake is right beside her, sporting a tank top with the most obnoxiously brain-melting neon patterns Soul has ever seen and far too many criss-crossing chains across his pants.

Soul heaves a long-suffering sigh and considers just turning around right there. Blake is high maintenance in terms of the amount of mental energy needed to deal with him, and Soul isn't sure he has it in him anymore.

Liz seems to notice this and pulls Blake into a headlock. "Come on, there'll be time to make fun of them later. I'm starving and we have a lot to catch up on."

Blake slips out of her halfhearted grip and inserts himself between Maka and Soul, flinging an arm around each of their shoulders. "Now that the gang's all here, we gotta battle plan for our senior year! It's gonna be epic."

Soul tries not to roll his eyes at the forced cheer in Blake's voice. After so many ignored phone calls and locked doors, Blake seems unsure of how to handle his former best friend besides pestering him with loud text messages whenever he wants to play basketball.

"Hey." Soul starts when he realizes Maka is talking to him and manages a small grunt of acknowledgement before she continues. "Have you been keeping up with the piano?

He clenches his jaw to keep from biting his tongue. "Not really."

She frowns at his clipped tone, but doesn't say anything else because they arrive at the restaurant. The Black Room used to be their usual hangout, and Soul notes that the dark-wooded pub seems as well-maintained and busy as he remembers.

Maka ducks out from under Blake's other arm. "Are you happy?" she asks once Blake leaves to speak to the host about a table.

Soul snorts. There's no way he's going to dignify that with a response. She'd always loved to read the paper - she knows what happened.

Her eyes are so sad. "Happy not playing, I mean," she amends quietly.

He raises an eyebrow. Really, this is what she talks about when she finally returns to Death City? Soul could almost laugh at how utterly absurd it is for her to feign interest in his playing when she didn't seem to care when he became the youngest living Evans.

"What does it matter?" he mutters, turning away from her. "'S not like you cared before."

She opens her mouth to respond when Blake whisper-yells that their table is ready and she looks at the ground instead, gesturing for him to go first. Soul acquiesces with an eyeroll - she can't even bear to look at him - and slumps into the booth next to Liz. Hopefully this will all be over soon.

An awkward silence settles over the table until Liz, glancing at Blake, launches into a story about how difficult varsity softball training camp was and Blake boisterously interjects with unnecessary euphemisms and gratuitous winking. Eventually, Maka has to intervene to stop the argument before either of them get riled up enough to get physical, and by that point the waiter has come to take their orders. Soul finds himself guessing what Maka will have - turkey burger with fries and a strawberry milkshake - right before she orders exactly that, and he clenches his jaw. Some memories die hard.

"Anyway, remember when you guys used to come in here to play on that piano?" Blake asks, nodding at the baby grand glimmering in the back of the restaurant.

"Of course," Maka answers, a secret smile curving her lips. "The three of us used to be so popular with the locals." She pauses, smile fading before she continues, "I wish Wes could be here, too."

Pain shoots through his chest, memories of the stilted smile on his brother's face when he asked Soul to please come to the competition tearing through his mind, of the bitterness that stung him at the thought that this would just mean another title for his parents to brag about, another trophy for Maka to dance around the room with in celebration. He couldn't bear to witness another stellar performance by his genius older brother, so he'd changed his mind at the last minute after having finally promised Wes he'd go.

"Yeah," he mumbles aloud, clenching his fists to stop the trembling. "'S'not something I really want to talk about." The table goes quiet, troubled eyes looking at him, and god, does everyone pity him? So what if he lives alone, the final living relic of a dying musical bloodline? So what if he lost his entire family? He's not a goddamn porcelain doll.

An older woman approaches the table, breaking this train of thought. "You two used to come in here a lot, didn't you?" she asks, smiling at Soul and Maka. "Me and my husband used to love listening to you play. Do you think you'd be willing to do another little ditty, for old times' sake?"

Liz and Blake exchange glances, brows drawn, but Soul has had enough pity for one day. "Yeah, sure thing. We'll play," he says, shrugging out of Blake's hand on his shoulder and belatedly looking to see if Maka even cares enough to go along with him. But she's already twisting in her seat to pull out her violin case, all smiles and determination and that special kind of laser focus she'd always applied to music.

Soul realizes this will be the first time he's played in public since the accident, but brushes the thought aside. He'll show them that there's nothing to feel sorry for here.

But as they approach the piano, footsteps loud in unison along the floorboards, Soul feels doubt muddle the white-hot spite that propelled him back to the piano - is it really the right time for this? What if he's terrible? What if he can't remember how to play and everyone looks at him with those shrewd, calculating eyes like they're trying to figure out why he's the one who lived?

His clenched fist is loosened by small, warm fingers lacing between his own, and he looks to see Maka's hand intertwined with his. "Don't worry," she whispers, voice as quietly commanding as it always has been. "You have me." Something stutters in his chest at the power in her gaze, something awakens in him at her touch, and before he can process it further, she's standing by the piano bench facing the restaurant, violin poised on her chin.

"When you're ready."

He slides onto the bench, cold ivory gleaming beneath his shaking fingertips. What was he thinking - he can't do this, can't fuck up again, can't give Nightmare Wes more fodder than he already has. Breathing is suddenly difficult, air seeming to leak from his lungs rather than fill them, and black spots swim across his vision in the shrinking restaurant. Sweat makes his hands slick and his cursory brush against the keys leaves them damp. Why did he have to run his useless mouth again, why-

A lone note, G, sings from her violin. It startles him out of his spiraling self-deprecation, and she peeks at him over her shoulder. Go, her eyes seem to tell him, a forest fire burning deep within. Play.

He plays.

Fingers long unused skitter across the keys to the accompanying tune of an old piece they'd used as a warm up. Except it's different somehow, harder, less a pleasant afternoon at the park than a call to arms, and Soul is swept away in her energy. He meets her when she fiddles with the tempo, predicts her take on the reprise, and all of a sudden it's like they're eleven again, playing in Soul's parents' practice hall while Wes supervised. When he hears her slow, just a bit, he takes the lead on a whim and bangs out a small, yet complimentary, solo piece. Grinning at him sidelong, she flings in some heart-pounding vibrato before moving into a ringing crescendo. She's breathing heavily, Soul is panting, and he wonders what exactly is transpiring between them as their sounds begin to meld and merge into one-

Silence.

Silence greets him like a cold winter's night, a sudden vacuum in his chest when he can no longer hear, or worse, feel, the music he's making. Her sound rings sweet and true in his ear, but his fingers might as well be tapping on felt for all the noise he hears from himself.

He should have known this would happen.

The accident left him with scars on his heart like sutures, small, aching knots that he can never quite seem to work out. They make him lose the music he creates - but only what he creates, and he knows it must be some sort of punishment or divine reckoning for the way he treated his family, treated his brother, before they passed, because what else could he have done to deserve this?

Focus. Breathe. Let the music flow out, just like Mother taught. Soul tries to relax and focus on Maka's sound and Maka's tempo to guide him through the remainder of the song, but it's so damn hard when his breath comes in rasping gulps and other sounds, like the hard scuffing of chairs on wood as people stand to get a better look, are heightened to his overstimulated ears. He bites his lip until it bleeds and the tangy, metallic warmth reminds him that he's still an Evans, no matter how defective, and that comes with all the skill borne from late nights practicing until his eyes swam and his hands cramped, and then an hour more. Music used to be his escape, his gift, and so help him he will not let Maka leave him behind.

Frantic hands continue to jump across the keys in what he can visually recognize as the proper chords, ears straining as he tries to keep up with her tempo and rhythm. There's something familiar about it, though, something comforting in the way she glances at him out of the corner of her eye and flutters the high notes so capriciously. But it reminds him of how she used to play for Wes, and then his hands begin to feel heavy with familiar, soul-sucking apathy - even when they were friends, he was never trusted with her music, with her sound. She saved that all for his brother.

These thoughts are clearly interfering with his game of charades, though, because he sees Maka tense and glance at him more often, shifting her style to something more traditional for the song instead of the personal twist she'd started with. No, no, no; he can do this, he can not fuck up one goddamn thing on this Earth just once. Soul attacks the keys with a vengeance, sweat dripping down his neck as he frantically tries to connect the chords he thinks accompany her slowing melody. It's gotta be a C here-no, wait, next came G-fuck, was this where he had to pause?

Like an old, rotted tree finally succumbing to decay, Soul crashes his way through the end of the song. Maka salvages their performance with some fancy finger work and an upbeat twist on the traditionally more dramatic ending, but Soul can already feel everyone's eyes on him, wondering what happened to the youngest Evans who'd had so much potential. He can practically hear their sneering thoughts (such a shame he never kept up with it; I guess all the talent died with his family), and the force of his self-loathing nearly flattens him. Bitterly, he wonders how he can even be surprised when this was clearly the only outcome possible. Guess he really does need babying, someone to make sure little Soulie doesn't trip and shatter again; god why did he mess up so badly, why couldn't he do this one thing right for once in his life-

"Soul?" Maka turns to look worriedly at him, a faint sheen of sweat glistening on her forehead in the low lighting. "Are you okay?"

The room is spinning again, quiet chatter from the audience swirling around him in a devastating mantra of you failed. He brings a shaking hand to his face, feels cold slickness beneath his fingers while blood from his bitten lip spills over and trickles down his chin.

"Soul." Her voice barely reaches him, mental static buzzing loudly in his head. He musters enough energy to loll his head to the side just in time to see her place her violin in its case.

Tenderly, she nudges the neck into place, runs a hand down its polished belly, clips the bow securely to the lid. Pausing for just a moment, she latches the case closed while something like regret ages her features.

Soul looks away, uncomfortable at the rawness of her expression. Playing is still clearly important to her, and, once again, he's getting in the way of it.

Instrument safely in hand, she walks over and tugs on a strand of his hair, once, twice, just like she used to. "Come on, let's take a walk."

Thoughts dulled, he shrugs and lets her tow him out of the restaurant past the many eyes and whispered conversations that pursue them like a dirge. He follows, not because he thinks he'll find any more peace out on the streets with their chipper, functioning people, but because anything is better than being skewered by the identical look of pity in Blake and Liz's eyes.

The world outside is both sudden and soothing after the fading, stinging whispers of The Black Room. Maka leads him down a side street to a small park dotted with shrubs and patches of bleeding hearts before gesturing to a busy courtyard. "There's a nice park this way. I was hoping we could talk for a bit."

He just stares at her, noticing different hues in the purple-blue palette of bags under her eyes and the small tic in her right hand she stops by making a fist.

Smiling, a small, tired twitch of the lips, she begins to walk down the path and stops only when he doesn't follow.

"Hold on," he calls, running a still-shaking hand through his hair. "You just show up, just like that? After being gone for how many years?" The air around him shimmers in the midday heat, making the walls appear to melt and twist in on themselves in the perfect surreal backdrop to this whole trainwreck of a day, because what other than a hallucination could explain Maka materializing from god knows where and talking to him like they haven't spent a day apart?

She winces slightly, hands flitting into fists and then relaxing so quickly he thinks it's all part of whatever fucked up trip he's on. "Six years, four months, and five days," she answers quietly.

Her precise count catches him off guard. "Still, why now? High school's almost over. You're just gonna leave again for college at the end of the year."

A bitter edge twists her smile into a grimace. "College is still a while off. I have some unfinished business here, that's all." She meets his gaze, eyes harder than before but still full of a fierce energy that fills her entire being and, somehow, awakens an answering thrum in him. Even that small flicker of emotion, that little tug on some deep part of him that has been tethered to her for as long as he can remember, sets his heart ablaze after years of nothing but bone-deep exhaustion.

It's a dangerous way to feel.

"Yeah, well, what's that got to do with me?" Soul crosses his arms and waits, hoping that she won't be able to answer so he can brush this encounter off as a small deviation from his usual routine of not giving a shit.

"Well, considering you're going to be my partner for the Death City Open, a whole lot." She stares him down, defiance and pride and something that makes his heart clench in her gaze, and Soul marvels at how easily she can unbalance him. Maybe it's just another defect of his.

"Since when am I doing anything?" Soul asks harshly. "You heard me play just now - you'd have to be crazy to want me to accompany you."

Her eyes narrow dangerously. "What I heard was my best friend playing like his heart has been ripped to pieces." She stops abruptly, mouth snapping shut with a sharp click, and takes a deep breath.

Soul registers two things quickly: she's just as able to read his music as she had been six years ago, and she still considers him her best friend. Funny, when the last thing she'd said to him was, "See you tomorrow." Funny, when she never talked to him again.

"Best friend, huh?" he says quietly, long-dormant embers of anger flaring to life with an intensity that surprises him. "What kind of best friend leaves without a goodbye? What kind of best friend doesn't call or text or write and just drops off the face of the earth?"

Maka visibly deflates and curls in on herself, pale hair falling over her face as she nods. "You're right. I shouldn't have left so suddenly. Did-" She looks at him cautiously. "Did Wes never tell you?"

"Tell me what?" As if he needs another reminder of how she only stuck around for Wes. Wes, who looked at her with a sparkle in his eyes only outshone by the answering glimmer in hers, Wes who played such achingly beautiful music for her when Soul was supposed to be out of the house but stayed behind anyway. How dare she come back now, after the ashes have been scattered.

"I left because he suggested a good music high school." Her eyes are impossibly sad, faraway and overflowing with regret. "I applied so late that I only got my acceptance a few days before I had to be there, so it was very hectic at the end. But he said-he promised he'd tell you where I was going."

Time slows down, thick and slimy like molasses as he processes her words. She left because of Wes? "Still, after the-after what happened, I thought, I'd hoped-" He stops himself before he can say too much; it's all still too raw for her to see how vulnerable he is. "I'd thought that after everything you'd at least call."

Maka looks like she's been struck before her eyes glint fiery evergreen and Soul takes an unconscious step back. "I did call you. I was...sick, for a few weeks before and after the funeral, but then I called you for a week straight and either a maid answered or it just rang for twenty minutes without being picked up and you better believe I stayed on the line for that long each time."

He snorts. "Sick. Right."

Soul watches as the fight drains out of her and the slant of her mouth turns bitter, as her tone weighs heavy with sadness. "I thought that since I wasn't able to come to the funeral, you wouldn't want anything to do with me."

This is too much. Her being here like this, her velvet lies, the way her shoulders slump and how she looks so small - it's too much. "Yeah, well, you were wrong."

He turns around and begins walking back to the restaurant, its patrons' cold stares more appealing at this point than anything to do with her. The pavement is hard under his feet and he focuses on that instead of the way her voice hitches when she yells after him to wait.

After the funeral and having to deal with sympathetic smiles in varying degrees of sincerity, he'd sat by the phone for hours so he wouldn't miss the call he knew she'd make. Hours turned to days turned to weeks until he created a voicemail box just for her, re-recording it six times until his voice stopped shaking and he snuffed out the hopeful lilt in his tone. One day, as he walked by and saw the blinking red zero glowing back at him, he simply unplugged it.

He'd waited enough.