He should be exhausted, but he can't sleep. He's as wired as if he had a hundred cups of coffee and it feels like electricity is jolting through his nerves. He's jittery and paranoid, every tiny sound or movement a cause for alarm. It takes all his willpower to keep his body fully human when the nurse opens the door suddenly to come check Maka's vitals. She smiles at him, and Soul manages a curt nod in return. The nurse leaves moments later, leaving him alone with his unconscious meister.

Whenever his eyes aren't flicking around for signs of a threat, they're on her, making sure she's still breathing evenly, that she's still alright, if injured, and then he anxiously continues his watch. He's being stupid, he knows there's nothing to threaten his meister inside this hospital. Black Star and Kid and the others are down the hall resting up as well. He knows there is no danger, but that does almost nothing to sooth his nerves.

Every time he shuts his eyes, his brain replays the events inside the book. He keeps reliving it, being knocked aside and scrambling up to find Maka pinned to a bed by the chainsaw weapon, his expression leaving no doubt as to his intentions. He remembers Giriko shouting obscenities at her that eventually degraded into a hysterical, desperate fury. There had been nothing else in Giriko's mind then except to cause Maka as much pain as possible - to cause the one who killed Arachne as much pain as possible.

Soul's hands shake. The fury in Giriko's eyes had almost matched the emotions swirling through Soul when he saw Maka pinned down. The difference was that Giriko's was backed by eight hundred years of bloodlust, of patient, patient waiting for the woman he would die for to wake up and return to him. Eight hundred years of waiting, shattered in an instant, and all that fury directed at one person.

He hopes he wouldn't be driven to that extreme. He hopes that it's because Arachne was a witch that Giriko allowed his morals to fall aside that easily. He hopes desperately that he would never be capable of the sort of torture he know Giriko would have inflicted upon her. Maka would never, ever condone something like that, and he hates the mere thought.

Maybe he's reading too much into this, but the similarities in their emotions had been all too clear. Behind Giriko's murderous rage was the same loyalty and determination he found inside himself. He can't help but listing the similarities in his head. There are so many, even aside from that. Slackers, pointed teeth, weapons, supposedly aloof...

The thought of Maka choosing to turn against Shibusen is laughable, but he considers the idea. What would he do if his partner chose the opposite side? Try to talk her out of it, and then... and then he'd give in, and he'd turn against them as well, for the sake of his partner, because to be away from her is to die inside. He needs her like he needs to breath.

The finality in this knowledge terrifies him, but he knew it was a possibility. He'd been warned upon entering Shibusen of how close partners could sometimes grow.

But it still scares him how much he cares about her.