watch?v=y8xe35vJ1rA This fic was inspired by the link posted here. It's a really great AMV, so I recommend watching it.
For years he watched and waited patiently. Kid was nothing if not patient, and he would wait forever for the girl her loved.
He would wait forever for Maka.
But he didn't know if she would wait for him.
His father had absolutely adored Kami, the celebrated meister, and her emerald eyed daughter and spoke of them often to his son. Kid's bedtime stories often consisted of the antics of the small girl and her precocious nature instead of the traditional stories. On his father's desk was a picture of the family, Maka sitting on her father's shoulders, beaming at the camera, he mother smiling at her daughter. Even as a child she was perfectly symmetrical and he was drawn to her.
He asked his father if he could meet her but his father just shook his head at him, telling him that maybe one day he could, but today was not the day.
When she started at the DWMA he made sure to come visit his father as often as he could, but even then he was barely able to see her, and she hardly noticed him. Sometimes their eyes would meet in the hallway, but she always averted her eyes from his gaze, much to his displeasure.
When he heard that she had finally found a weapon to partner with he cheered for her, happy to know that she would finally be able to begin to follow in her mother's footsteps. And when he found out it was a boy named Soul, his happiness began to fade.
But he continued to watch patiently, wanting only to see her smile.
She didn't smile as much as she used to after he mother divorced her father, leaving he daughter behind to travel the world.
He still continued to watch her through his father's mirror from time to time as he tried to control the feelings tugging at his heart. She was just so good, and he, well he was a grim reaper, something that should send a lovely creature like her away in tears.
But there was a hardness about her, a fierceness that said she could survive anything and she would never back down. It was intoxicating.
When he saw the way Stein held her in his grasp through the mirror, a part of him died. Even though he knew Stein personally and knew that no harm would come to her, it still pained him to see her in eyes wide with fear. It took all his control not to rescue her, and when reason came a hold of him, knowing that it wasn't the right thing to do, he blamed it on his obsession with symmetry.
But he knew it was a lie.
She was more important than toilet paper.
When he could bear it any longer, he enrolled as a student, hoping to get closer to her. He pretended it was for other reasons, but both he and his father knew better, as did his weapons. They only hoped his heart wouldn't be broken by the blonde meister.
He hoped that just as much as they did.
0000000
Whenever their eyes met she looked away immediately. Who was she to look at a Death God?
His golden eyes taunted her with promises she knew they could never keep, so she avoided them at all costs. But she never avoided him.
She watched him constantly whenever he was visiting at the Academy, something she pretended to herself she did only because she was curious.
Death the Kid held an almost magic quality to her. As a child her mother told her stories of Lord Death and his son, the shinigami child's progression in the footsteps of his father and what a prodigy he was.
At first, Maka was envious of this child to have the admiration of her mother.
And then she wanted to meet him, to know if he was as impressive as her mother said he was. But whenever she asked her mother just smiled her sweet smile and patted her on the head, promising that one day she would.
Maka held onto that promise.
As the years passed she thought she would forget about him, but she didn't. If anything, it grew worse.
She chastised herself for following and tracking his soul when he was at the academy, knowing the action to be a foolish one. But she did it anyway.
And then she met Soul.
Soul was lazy and difficult, but he was her partner and someone she trusted with her life.
She tried so very hard to transfer her affection from the shinigami child to her weapon partner. To some extent, she succeeded. She relied on her partner more and more and their bond strengthened.
Then Death the Kid joined the DWMA and Maka knew she was in for it.
000000
It was months before they were comfortably on a first name basis, but Kid embraced the small amount of progress with open arms. The more time he spent with the girl and her partner, the more began to realize that he truly loved her. The feeling of adoration and amazement from his childhood faded, leaving something much stronger behind.
He tried to let it go, tried to brush it off as friendship, but he knew he was just lying to himself and one day it was going to catch up to him. One day he would regret it.
He also hated how much he liked Soul. He trusted Soul to protect her, and though he initially disliked the boy for challenging him, Soul had earned his respect over time. He proved his devotion to his meister every day, and Kid had to commend him for that, as much as it pained him to do so.
When he saw that the weapon had developed feelings for his partner, he decided it was time to bow out gracefully. Years of watching Maka had led him to almost nothing, but maybe this boy could make her happy.
He didn't deserve a girl like her anyway.
That's what he told himself as he took a step back, encouraging Soul to pursue the girl at times. Soul had no way of knowing the pain he was causing to his friend because Kid did nothing to tell him.
Kid thought she seemed happier than she had before, so he resigned himself to his fate.
0000000
Maka could feel Kid pulling away from her and she hated it. After all the work she had put into trying to make their friendship work, he was pulling back, leaving her behind.
She hated him for it.
But she loved him.
Loved?
Yes, Loved.
She loved the way he confronted every situation, never allowing fear to make him back down. He didn't trust in everything, choosing to learn for himself what was true and what wasn't. She loved his eccentricities, even if they drove her up a wall sometimes. She saw the child within the Death God, the one that was unsure of what was expected of him, the one that needed to be comforted and soothed, and she wanted nothing more than to do that.
But she couldn't, because he wouldn't let her.
She felt like he would barely meet her gaze sometimes, but even those fleeting moments were enough to feed her heart for weeks, enough to encourage her crazy attachment to her fellow meister.
She wasn't unaware of her partner's feelings for her, but she knew she couldn't return them. No matter how much she wished him all the love in the world, she knew she would be lying to herself and to him if she told Soul she loved him. So she kept her mouth shut on the subject, trying to pretend that she didn't notice at all.
Maka cried into her pillow some nights, knowing that she was taken by a love that could never be. One night Soul heard her muffled sobs and stumbled into her room blearily. He took in the sight of his meister state of disarray and her tear-stained pillow and he sighed before taking a seat on her bed.
"It's about Kid, isn't it?" he asked softly, unwilling to meet her eyes.
She stopped sobbing and lowered the pillow from her face. "It doesn't matter. . ."
"Dammit, Maka, you're crying, so obviously it does matter!"
"Why do you care?"
"Because I love you!"
Soul stood up, turning away from her and running a hand through his white locks. "But you already knew that, didn't you?" he asked quietly.
She didn't answer because it hurt so much, she could feel her partner's pain through their link, but she couldn't say anything to comfort him. Soul turned back to face her with a sad expression.
"I've always known that you loved him, I can feel it through our link," he said quietly. "I kept hoping that one day you would change your mind, but you didn't. Not after Asura, and I guess not after graduation either."
The pain of his words where overwhelming to her, a sensory and emotional overload for her abused heart. All she could do and nod and try to stop the flow of tears while her partner sat back down on her bed, leaning against the wall.
"What I don't get, is why haven't you done anything?"
His words struck a chord with her. Why hadn't she done anything? She had loved him for so long, so why? Was it fear? Was the Brave Maka Albarn a victim to fear when it came to love?
"I'm not worth it."
"Like Hell you're not, he doesn't deserve you."
Maka looked him in the eye at his outburst. Was this her once idiotic partner that picked a fight with Kid the first time he met him? A tear slid down her cheek.
"Soul, he doesn't even know I exist."
"Well that's dumb, you guys are on the same resonance team, so I'm pretty sure he knows you're there."
"Well obviously, but I'm just a teammate, and he's got Liz and Patti, and they're both beautiful."
"Maka, do you remember when I told you that's the Soul that matters, nothing else?" She nodded at him, unsure where this was going.
"Lord Death taught me that, and Kid told it to him when he was a child. He can see your soul, just like you can see his, and your soul is breathtaking, Maka." He scooted closer to her, putting an arm around her shoulders. "If you truly love him, then don't ever give up on him. It'll happen."
She leaned into her partner, her heart finally beginning to calm down. "How do you know all this?"
He grinned at her toothily. "It pays to be partners with a bookworm."
After a moment of silence Maka spoke again, the tension in the room thick enough to be cut with a knife.
"Are you okay with this Soul? With me going after him, I mean." Her voice was soft, but she knew he heard her. She needed to know that he was going to be okay. She would never want to hurt Soul if she could avoid it.
"Yeah, I don't think I could trust you to anyone else."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, he loves you as much, if not more, than I do."
She bolted up from him, her eyes lit with confusion. Her emerald gaze met his crimson eyes where he looked away sheepishly. "Weapons pick up a lot during team resonance, Maka," he continued quickly. "All he was worried about was keeping you safe, that's the biggest thought he has during every fight we have. He's always worried about you."
She stood up from her bed reaching for the hoodie on her chair and throwing it over her hastily.
"Wait, where are you going?" he called after her as she ran out the door.
"I have to do this!" she called back as the front door slammed shut.
Because she did have to do this. She had spent years missing out on love, but she wouldn't do it anymore. She would rush to find him, and she would find him no matter what it cost her.
A/N, so I'm thinking about continuing this, not sure. I kinda've wanted it to be a one shot, but then it just kept getting longer and longer, and here we are. I could leave it here, or I could continue, who knows. Let me know your thoughts :)
Revised and Edited 3/15/15
Wri
