Drabble prompt asked by therewithasmile on tumblr.
Enjoy!
His phone vibrates in his pocket for a second or two, and his hand immediately jumps towards it.
He's been feeling antsy about the meister-only mission Maka has gone on and can't help but worry about it for the totality of the five hours they'd been apart. Call him mother hen, overprotective, worry wart, but he had a right to want his meister to be safe, damnit!
So when the small screen lits up and her message is opened, he can't help but feel his stomach twist into tiny knots. He knows his meister well, well enough that she is rarely this curt in the messages she sends - she's big on all the cute emojis and smilies for some reason, and her bookworm tendencies apparently make her messages end up being extremely long-winded. So the tiny, helpless please come get me just somehow doesn't sit right in the part of his soul that has been taken over by her.
Soul likes to compare his meister to a drug. She is something he can never get enough of, violent tendencies and hot temper included, and he finds himself drifting over to her more and more as the time goes by.
He knows only all too well what it means. It's with a heavy heart that he stamps down on those little fluttering butterflies on his stomach and puts his feelings away for just a little longer, in the vain hope that someday they'll go away and he won't have to be in deep, desperate love with his meister.
She is the most important thing on his life right now, and the thought of her alone and insecure and afraid, blood seeping into the ground, it's enough for him to make his way outside and then on his bike to the site her mission was on in half the time if would usually take him. A two-hour trip made in less than one, and yet all that keeps repeating on his mind is too slow, too slow, too slow.
And then he sees her. He doesn't recognize her at first, a tiny, curled up shaking mess, the complete opposite of the bold scythe-wielder that she is most of the time, and his heart tears up at the sight like a wet, crumpled up piece of paper. Her body is rocking back in forth in the same place, gloved hands tightly clenched around the old, beaten up phone, lighted up screen reflecting on her blank eyes.
"Maka?" he asks softly, lowly, afraid that anything louder will scare her away like a frightened animal.
Her eyes immediately snap up to meet his.
"Soul," she croaks out, like she hadn't expected him to be there.
He repeats her name, again and again as he makes his way towards the most precious thing in existence to him, all too fragile against his arms when he curls them around her. There is a sob against his shoulder, though her eyes remain dry.
Her voice is accusing when she speaks again. "You were gone."
Soul says nothing, hands running through her ash blonde hair, petting the stray strands back into place. The dirt in the ground floats up into the air as a breeze passes by, gently disturbing their clothing as it carasses the pair.
"I never left," he whispers to her reassuringly.
"You did." Another chocked sob. "You were gone, far away, dead, and left me behind."
He wonders if her enemy was the kind that messed with people's minds. Wonders if it's a constant fear of hers, like it is to him, to be left behind in a world without the other piece of their soul. It's a pounding, binding fear that leaves his mouth tasting like the dirt in the wind and the ashes of a fire, haunts his dreams and that never leaves him for more than just a few moments.
"Even if I'm gone," he says, words tasting like the purest of truths. "I'll always come back if you ask."
"Like I did when I texted you?" she asks, and though Soul is pretty sure that the insanity is still clouding her mind, he knows that this is the kind of question he has to answer truthfully.
"Always," he says, and he means it.