A/N: day one, prompt "roommates." this one's rated M.


This is the way it goes:

To start, they take him to the white room and tie him in the strapped chair and then leave him. The brilliant light blinds him and makes his head ache something awful, so by the time the smooth-voiced man comes he's dizzy and nauseous and can hardly think straight. The smooth-voiced man asks him questions, thousands of them. He never knows the answers, though, and this makes the smooth-voiced man sigh and rub his temples. That sigh sends a jolt of panic through his gut, and he strains against the restraints that chafe at his wrists, his ankles, his forehead in a futile attempt to escape, because he knows what's coming (except he doesn't, not really, not at all).

Sometimes, they peel the skin from his finger until he's screaming and begging them to cut it off, to stop the pain. Other times cold black slimy nightmares are injected into his veins and he dreams of his brother slaughtered, of killing a child, of staring up at a cold pale sky as his ruptured, broken body destroys itself. They cut, they burn, and through it all they always demand answers to a thousand questions, in loud voices, in soft voices, in his brother's voice, in the soft sweet whisper of someone he used to know. But he doesn't know the answers, he never knows the answers, and so when it gets to be too much he'll lie, because maybe that way they'll stop.

Oh, he'll lie.

He cries about it after, in the silent darkness of his cell, because they don't like it when he lies. When he lies, they know, and they punish him for it.

"Tell us the truth," says the smooth-voiced man, "and we'll let you go."

IF ONLY HE KNEW WHAT THE TRUTH WAS!

/

It starts in her stomach, a subtle bubbling deep inside. She looks at the smooth-voiced man, his eyes hidden behind impenetrable black glasses, his fingers steepled in front of him.

"What's your name?" he asks, like he always does.

The feeling spreads through her nerve endings, makes her entire body tingle. She doesn't answer.

"Why are you here?" he asks, like he always does.

It rises uncontrollably up her esophagus and warms her throat, ignites her brain. First her breathing hitches, then her shoulders shake, and finally the smile blooms wide across her cheeks and breaks her face in two. The giggles are quiet, but they quickly rise in volume, until her hysterical cackles fill the room, until she falls out of her chair and reopens the cuts in her chest, until her entire body shudders and writhes and threatens to come apart at the seams because of the force of her mirth. She laughs and laughs and laughs, because they cannot break her. They've ripped her skin and left her alone and injected her with what feels like their entire arsenal of nasty chemicals and she has not told them a single one of her secrets. She knows she has Arachne and her sisters beat, because they can't kill her if they want the information that she has. And she knows, oh yes she knows they want it bad, but they're not getting it. Those filthy bitches will never pry her precious info from between her lips. Never ever ever.

And so she laughs, and the smooth-voiced man sighs.

When her collar pinches her neck and the world goes black, she knows she's won.

/

He's counting his fingers when he hears the sound of a door opening, of a body falling, of another set of lungs breathing. Apprehension twists like a knife in his gut. Surely this creature was sent to kill him, or to extract information from him that he simply doesn't have. He keeps his breathing even, though, and tries to keep calm, tries to sound like he's sleeping, because these things can smell fear.

Then they start giggling. It's a girl. He can tell by the sound.

(He wishes she would stop. Her laughter scares him more than sobs would. To drown her out, he concentrates on his hands.)

His right hand is a stump. It's achy and bloody and keeps him awake. His left is faring much better. Only the middle and pinky fingers are gone, and just the top part of the ring. What baffles him, though, is that he can feel his missing appendages. They ache and itch and flex along with his other ones (his right hand most of all), but when he tries to grasp his missing hand and fingers his left meets with only empty air.

Still, the girl laughs.

Sometime later, she's stopped, and there's silence except for the sound of her breathing.

"Hello?" she calls, breathless, curious.

He doesn't answer.

"Hello?"

He's terrified of what could happen if he answers.

"I know you're there!"

He keeps his breathing even.

"Answer me!"

In. And out. His phantom fingers twitch.

"I probably shouldn't talk to you anyway," and she snorts. "You've probably been put here to get to me. Well, tell them that there's no fucking way it'llwork! No fucking way!"

/

She crawls because she can't stand up without ripping open her wounds. So far, her cellmate hasn't said a word, and this puzzles her, because wouldn't he talk to her if he wanted to weaken her? In fact, he hasn't really done much but sleep, judging from the sound of his breathing.

The collision makes stars swim before her eyes, and she sits down hard. More cautious this time, her hand quests forward and encounters something hard and cold and smooth. "A barrier," she breathes, and she frowns, because why would they do that? Separating them means there's no possibility of the cellmate touching her or killing her or whatever it is that this plot is designed to do.

She raps her knuckles against the hard barrier. "Halooo!" she calls. "Are you there? Well of course you are, how could you not be? I was just thinking, you're gonna have a hell of a time trying to kill me from behind that thing!"

The breathing remains as steady and utterly indifferent as ever.

/

"Do you want to hear a story?" she asks him a long, long time later.

No, he doesn't. This is probably a ploy. More of their lies. The slight tremble in her voice is there to play on his sympathies, nothing more. He swallows. His mouth is dry.

(But in a starved, desperate corner of his mind, he actually does want to. Very much.)

"I'll tell you anyway."

In. And out.

"There once was a man who was cursed by a witch, because he spurned her," she begins. "He could only come out at night, because if the sun were to hit him, it would cause his skin to melt and put him in terrible pain. More than anything, he wanted to be able to rejoin his fellows in the daylight, because he was lonely in his shadowy cave in the hills."

Keep it steady, keep it steady.

"So he armored himself, covering every inch of his skin in fabric, and went towards the villagers he listened to so often, thoughts of the father and brothers among them bolstering him on. But when the people saw him, they were frightened, because to them he was a monster, made menacing by all the layers of clothes he put on. This made the man very sad, and he realized that he could never belong in that beautiful sunlit world again. So he went back to his cave and stayed there for a very long time."

A stab of pain shoots through his missing hand. His breathing hitches.

"But as it happened, one of the villagers stumbled into his cave quite by accident, a girl. She was very frightened of the man at first, but she had a kind heart. Every day she would bring food up the hill, for which the man was very grateful. When he told her about the witch, the girl was very angry. She vowed to break his curse.

"So they journeyed, across deserts and oceans and forests, searching for her. But when they found her dwelling place, they discovered that the witch was long dead, killed by another hero. This sent them into despair, for how could the man be cured now?

"But in the back of her cave, there grew a flower. When the man sniffed it, he was freed from his curse. He and the girl married, and they lived happily ever after."

He blinks, and he realizes that he's back in the cold dark cell, where he's missing a hand and his body aches and there are no such things as happy endings.

/

When the cuffs around her wrists and ankles and neck grow ever so slightly warmer, she screams, because she's pissed off and scared and she doesn't want to lose any more toes and fingers. Panic crashes in her brain, drowning out all rational thought, but her body is frozen as the cuffs lift her into the air, taking her from the cell.

Later, as Cackle peels the skin from her finger, she admits one wrong, because she doesn't think she can take it anymore:

"I CHANGED IT! I CHANGED THE ENDING! THERE WAS NO FLOWER; THE MAN WAS NEVER CURED! INSTEAD HE STAYED THAT WAY FOREVER! I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY, I'M SO SO SORRY!"

/

She says her name is Maka Albarn. Her birthday is in April. She's nineteen. She likes books and baking and being in charge. She was also a Resistance spy.

She weaves entire worlds with her words, this girl. She changes the cold dark cell into a sunlit garden ringing with birdsong, or a fantastic undersea palace that's been abandoned for a thousand years, or her own home in the capital, peopled with friends who have names like Tsubaki and Blake and Stein. He finds out that Blake has a god complex and Stein is the smartest psychopath the world has ever seen and that she kind of has this crush on a golden-eyed guy everyone calls Kid. She talks of camping trips taken with Tsubaki and the annoying Blake, of books she's read, of the fact that she wants to be a lawyer. He learns all about how she got the nickname "Vomit Comet" from Blake (she got really, really drunk) and how her mama taught her to fire a laser pistol (despite the fact that owning a weapon like that was illegal).

He's drawn to her stories like a moth to a flame.

So when she returns one day from a session and the stories don't start up again, he's lost until he realizes something that makes his heart stop cold: he's gotten attached to this girl.

And that absolutely terrifies him.

/

The cell is just a cell again now that she's quiet, growing ever darker and ever colder.

/

He just wants to hear her voice again.

(He can't take it anymore.)

/

There's a soft knocking sound on the barrier.

It's just a dream, she tells herself, because she's so tired but she's afraid of what waits for her in her dreams and it was probably the hallucination of a sleep-deprived mind anyway.

As if reading her thoughts, the knocking stops and silence falls.

There's the sound of a throat being cleared. Her eyes snap open, because the breaths, those maddening, steady, indifferent breaths have stopped at last and she'll finally be able hear the voice behind them.

"And then?"

A man's voice. Deep, raspy from disuse. "And then what?" she asks.

"You…you never said what happened to…to Hazel." His words are hesitant, disjointed, as if he's not quite sure how to speak anymore.

She has to think a moment, and she's surprised that he remembers. "That's it," she tells him. "That's where the book ended."

"Ah."

Silence stretches between them.

"What do you think happened?" he asks at last.

"Hmm…I like to think that she went on with her life. Met someone else. Was happy."

"That's cool."

She smiles, because she hasn't had a real conversation in quite a long while and it felt nice.

/

He tells her his name when she asks. He has to think, because it's been a while since he's needed one. But it comes to him, slowly, mercifully: "Soul Evans."

"That, my friend, is a really cool name."

He can't help but wonder if she's mocking him, because he had always gotten weird looks for his unusual moniker (eyes and teeth notwithstanding). But there is no hint of derision in her tone, so for once, he decides to take it as a compliment and tells her so.

/

She tries to get him to talk more about himself, but every time she broaches the subject he shuts down and they're reduced to sitting against the cold hard barrier in silence. She respects this silence now, because the first time it happened, she tried to push him for information. That made him move to the far corner of the cell, and worse, he didn't talk to her for a long time (which drove her crazy but she didn't want to admit it). So she learns about the enigma known as Soul Evans in bits and pieces. She finds out that he had a brother. That he was a soldier. That he was eighteen when they put him here but he has no idea how old he is now. That he's a music junkie. That he really likes to cook. It's still a pitiful amount of information, but it's all she has.

He doesn't seem to like her very much (or anything at all, really). He's quiet, insightful, and broken, in body and mind. The remnants of sarcasm salt his words. But if she's being honest with herself he's become the only thing keeping her frayed and broken mind from completely falling apart, because in her dreams the witches' questions crash loud and screaming into one another and she can feel her tormentor chew through her chest and rip out her warm beating heart with his teeth.

One day, when he returns broken and bleeding and missing two toes, he tells her in a choked voice that he used to play the piano.

/

"Ah," he says as the syringe enters his arm.

"Does it hurt?" asks the little girl.

Her papa licks his lips, leaving a black smear. "No."

"It looks like it does," Maka says, eyeing the large needle.

"It feels great," says her papa, and he smiles. But he's melting, she realizes to her sudden horror, slow and steady, like a candle, like chocolate, like cheese. His smile widens grotesquely before turning into a grimace, and she can see his ribs swimming in the dark oily muck beneath the ruins of his clothes. One blue eye falls from his face with a soft squelching noise. "My blood is black!" he gurgles, and from the glutinous ruins of his body a monster emerges, grotesquely skinny with shark's teeth and burning red eyes.

"I love you, Maka," it says in Soul's voice, and to her utter horror she finds she cannot scream.

/

After that, she finds her papa pouring from her lips and into Soul's lap.

"He sounds like a douchebag," her cellmate says matter-of-factly.

"He is."

They're sitting cross-legged, face-to-face (or at least she thinks they are), the barrier rearing up invisibly between them. She's on the verge about telling him about the hallucination too, but then she remembers that he probably doesn't want to hear a horror story like that (after all, he has enough nightmares of his own).

/

"Tell me about the sun."

"Well…um…it's really bright…"

"You're usually so eloquent," he says dryly.

"Not now."

He sighs. "It's a big yellow ball in the sky, right?"

"Yeah. You left out warm."

He takes a deep, shuddering breath. "I can't remember the sun," he tells her.

She takes a deep breath.

"The sun is bright and hot," she begins. "Sometimes it's yellow and sometimes it's red and sometimes it's…it's every color in between. I used to go swimming on the roof of my apartment tower at six o'clock and the setting sun would turn the whole city into glittering gold and copper. The skycars would be like sparks, dancing up from a campfire. It was cold all the way up there, but during the summer I liked to try and get a tan anyway, because the warmth felt so nice."

"Did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Get a tan."

"No. Too pale."

He exhales sharply, almost like a laugh. Impulsively, she reaches towards him, but her broken fingers slam into the barrier.

"The hell was that?" he asks as she clutches her hand, whimpering and swearing under her breath.

"I just wanted to see your smile."

/

Over and over, she slams into the barrier, until she's broken and bleeding and sobbing uncontrollably because it hurts and she's starving and she needs to touch his skin. She's going to go insane, she's going to die if she doesn't touch him, if she doesn't feel his living warmth, the proof that he is real.

This is how they'll break you, a part of her mind whispers. And in that instant she hates herself for falling into their trap, because she knew, oh, this whole time she knew.

"Maka, Maka, Maka," he says, and she hears the dull thuds of his fists against that fuckinggoddamn barrier.

"Soul!" she half-shrieks, half-moans, and that's when he tells her a story, a story about a soldier who couldn't be controlled.

/

"I love you," she tells him one day or night or year, and he wants to say I don't or I'm sorry or another such rejection, but he can't deny the warm, flickering thing that has kindled to life in his chest. "I love you," she repeats. "I love you I love you I love you, Soul Evans. I love you so much."

"Maka," he croaks, and presses his remaining hand to the barrier. He can hear the sob in her voice, feel her tears wetting his cheeks, because he knows and she knows that those words have doomed them both.

/

"Now," says the smooth-voiced man, his fingers steepled in front of him like they always are, "what is your name?"

The girl swallows. On the table, the boy shudders involuntarily.

"M-Maka," she blurts out.

The smooth-voiced man looks at her.

"M-Maka Albarn."

"And why are you here?"

She swallows. She can't let the bitches have her secrets.

Someone Maka doesn't know comes forward, his foot scuffing softly on the floor. She sees the glint of a needle in his hand.

She can't let the bitches have her secrets.

The needle plunges into Soul's neck, and his eyes snap open, this startling crimson color, made even more so by the thin covering of white hair on his scalp.

He moans, and Maka flinches.

She keeps her lips pressed together, even as the moans grow to screams, even as he stares wide-eyed at whatever horror he's being forced to see. Tears course down her cheeks, hot and thick, and she can't see, only hear him, and that somehow makes it so much worse.

"I'm a traitor!" she chokes out because she can't take it anymore, and then, mercifully, the screaming stops.

"Why?"

She sucks in a ragged breath. "Because…"

The bitches can't have her secrets.

They give him something different this time, something that the smooth-voiced man tells her is pure liquid fear.

His shrieks are something out of a nightmare, something dragged up from the deepest parts of a being, the parts that should never, ever be touched. They pierce straight through her armor to cut her heart with its every beat.

To hell with her secrets.

/x/

When she wakes it's to sunlight and fresh air and birdsong, and she's bewildered by all these things because they simply cannot be real. So she sits up (or tries to, but her entire body is one solid mass of ache and pain), and surveys her surroundings.

A small room, bright and airy. Worn wooden floorboards, whitewashed walls, unadorned except for a rug and a nightstand with a vase of flowers atop it. There are windows too, two of them, and they're open, letting in a warm sweet breeze.

What a nice dream they've given me, she thinks, but then she remembers bright globes of light, Blake's voice, and the word soul.

She can't stop crying, because she's a traitor and he's dead.

/

"It's okay," Tsubaki says. "You didn't give them anything important."

"But-"

"They didn't tell you any more than you needed to know, Maka. You didn't jeopardize anything, I promise."

Tsubaki's soft voice washes over her, but it doesn't soothe the ache in her chest. All Maka can do is sob and cling to her friend and marvel at how easily she was broken.

"You want to go see Soul?" Tsubaki asks gently, when Maka's calmed down some.

With a hiccup, she pulls away, stunned. "But they killed him," is all she can think to say, and through red-rimmed eyes Tsubaki smiles.

/

When he wakes, there's a shape at the end of his bed. His first instinct is to flinch away, but his body is heavy and slow and his vision's clearing anyway.

Her hair is longer. That's the first thing he notices. It's ashy blonde and dull and kind of greasy, but it gives her gaunt face a much softer look (or maybe her face itself is softer; it's hard to tell). Her green eyes are huge as ever, though, and they gaze at him hungrily, sparkling with tears.

"You were dead," she says, and then she takes what remains of his left hand in both of hers.

"I'll bet," he groans, because his mouth is dry and his stump is aching and he can feel the beginnings of a headache at the edges of his mind.

Her fingers trace his remaining hand and they sit in silence.

"Where am I?" Soul asks after a while.

"A safe house, somewhere."

He takes a deep breath. The air smells like wildflowers and growing things.

"They're going to get you a new hand, you know," she says, reaching under the blankets and squeezing his right arm.

The breath catches in his throat. His eyes meet hers.

She smiles. "I can't wait to hear you play."