A/N: Largely experimental, but Ice gave it the go-ahead, so here it is:
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It doesn't need to be said.
They both know it, feel it. Perhaps feel isn't the right word – feel implies that it is humming under their skin, that it is an emotion, something that can come on strongly one day and dissipate within the next. Feel isn't concrete enough to describe what they have.
It was sort of magnetic in the beginning, like when they first met. Something in her pale face and green eyes dared him to open up a little, challenge her determination by showing the darker side of his personality. Something in the echoing and haunted hues of his playing resounded in her, accepted her – drew her in. They partnered that day based on that pull.
But it is more than simply that.
They understand each other. Of course, it's not perfect, not even with soul resonance, because there's always something in the other person that fights back, struggles to be apart, to be independent – there's always something. But Maka dreams of making Soul a death scythe and he'd rather die than to stand in the way of that quixotic dream, the dream that binds them closer and gives him a place to belong in her heart, an excuse to stay. It keeps them together.
He dedicated himself to that goal a long time ago, just a month after meeting her. But in-between the months and years barriers fell, wounds bled, and trust swelled. And the title of death scythe sharpened into a common belief and resolve in the two, rather than a goal that flimsily kept them together. The core had changed.
A concord, a friendship, a bond, an affinity – these have all been used to describe the space between them.
But it's more than that. It's always been more than that.
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