A/N: This is kind of a companion fic to Hand in Hand, a one-shot that I wrote for SoMa Week last year. It's not necessary for reading this, but it is a good story if you want to check it out. All you really need to know for now is that Maka is finally aware of her weapon form (from the last episode in the anime) and is finally starting to train herself to control it.
Disclaimer: I don't own Soul Eater. I barely even own a pair of clean pants this week.
Soul always manages to find a way to piss Maka off. It's a Sunday afternoon, and both have decided to take the day to relax. No weapon training, no studying (Soul had to force Maka into that one), and no missions. Just a day of peace where the two can watch television and read books in relative peace.
Relative peace.
"Hey nerd, get your cankles off my lap. I want something to drink."
It doesn't take long for Maka's temper to flare. The vein in her forehead is already starting to throb. "What did you just say?"
"What, about you being a nerd or having fat ankles?"
That's it. Maka's pissed now, and on instinct raises the book in her hand up to smash down on her weapon's skull. Her literary weapon is poised above her head, and she's fully prepared to permanently embed Mary Shelley's Frankenstein into Soul's face, but as she brings her arm down Soul's eyes grow incredibly wide, making him look far more terrified that normal than for a typical novel-beating.
He pushes her legs off of his lap and rolls off the couch in one jerky motion, and Maka only manages to tap him with the book in her hand. What is his problem?
She's just about to ask him, but Soul's already speaking, palms out in front of him and voice low.
"Whooaaa there. I'm gonna have to ask ya to put that weapon down. It's too early in your training for us to get into a fight using blades. And I guarantee you you'll lose if you try."
Blades? What is he-?
She looks down, and where she had thought her hand would be, holding a book and preparing to strike at her partner for insulting her, instead there's a silver and black blade protruding from her shoulder.
"Shit!" she yells, more out of surprise than anything.
"Shit is right. Now will you promise not to slice me again if I come closer?"
"Again?" She didn't touch him! He rolled off the couch before she could land a hit! But when she looks down, she sees blood trickling down his upper arm.
"Oh my God." Her left hand claps over her mouth and guilt crashes down on her when she realizes that not only has she sliced Soul, but she wasn't even aware of doing it. "Oh my God, Soul. I'm SO-"
"Maka," Soul interrupts. "I'm fine. I'm fine. You don't need to apologize. You barely scratched me. "
She doesn't believe him. Maka stands up from the couch to get a better look at it, but Soul is putting out a hand to stop her, his eyes fixing her with a firm stare. She stops abruptly, rocking back on her heels, not bothering to hide her hurt expression when Soul won't let her come near him.
"If you wanna come see it, you need to transform your arm first. You know that, Maka." He's using his teacher voice, the authoritative tone he always takes when he's teaching Maka about her weapon form. Maka nods slowly, and focuses on her right arm. It takes a minute or two (her heightened emotions aren't helping her concentrate), but eventually her arm begins to tingle and she watches it glow for a moment before it morphs back into flesh and bone. She squeezes her right hand into a fist and exhales.
"Can I see it now?"
Soul nods and walks closer to her. She pushes up the sleeve on his t-shirt slightly to get a better look at the cut on the inside of his right bicep. Soul was right. It's not bad. The blade only cut slightly deeper than Blair's claws would. It will probably be healed within a week. And while that thought is comforting to Maka, it doesn't help with the guilt she feels over transforming unintentionally. She opens her mouth to apologize again, but Soul must know what she's going to say, because again, he's stopping her.
"Maka, it's alright. I know you're upset that you messed up, but it happens." She looks down in shame, but Soul's fingers are already under her chin and tilting her head up to look into his eyes. "That's why we're practicing, right?"
She tries for a smile, but it's not quite there yet. "I'm gonna go get you some gauze for your arm."
Maka leaves her weapon in the living room as she wanders down the hallway to the bathroom to retrieve their first aid kit. As she's rummaging through the medicine cabinet, she can hear Soul padding down the hallway after her.
"All weapons go through this, Maka. That's why we come to DWMA. So we can learn how to control our weapon form."
She's already leaving the bathroom, passing him to go back to the living room where there's better light so she can properly bandage up Soul. He follows her, and sits down on the coffee table while she sits down on the couch in front of him.
"I've been practicing for weeks, Soul. How come it still keeps popping up at random times?" The frown never leaves her face as she begins cleaning his wound with antiseptic. Soul jumps a bit when the wet cotton ball comes in contact with his skin, not prepared for the sting. Maka looks at him apologetically and continues dabbing away the blood.
"No one said this was gonna be easy, Maka."
She sighs forlornly and grabs a roll of gauze from the kit. "I know. But I didn't expect it to be this—"she scrunches up her eyebrows for a moment, thinking of the word, "—unpredictable, I guess."
A silence stretches out before them. Soul can tell that Maka is frustrated, and wishes there would some way to reassure her. The defeated tone in her voice is almost unnatural. Maka has been one of the best one-star meisters at the Academy for as long as he can remember, and she's at the top of her class when it comes to academics. The idea to failure is foreign to his partner, and he wishes there was some way to convey to her that every new weapon goes through this stumbling block. Thinking back to his time before he became her partner, he gets an idea.
"Did I ever tell you that when I first started transforming I ended up destroying one of my brother's violins?" Maka looks up from her work of wrapping gauze around Soul's forearm. She furrows her eyebrows and shakes her head. "It was right after I turned twelve. I was just strumming the strings with my fingers one day when no one else was around, and without me noticing my arm transformed and I cut right through the strings and left a giant scratch on the neck of the violin. Wes was FURIOUS. It was his favorite one."
"What did you do?" Maka asks.
"What any good brother would do." Soul smirks at Maka. "I hid. I was terrified of seeing Wes's face when he got home, so I hid in the attic for four hours until I had to come down to pee. I could hear him shouting from where I was hiding, and I thought for sure he would never speak to me again."
"And did he?"
Soul shrugs. "Course. Wes is a good brother, and he understood that I didn't mean it. He just needed some time to blow off some steam. He eventually let me off the hook so long as I helped pay him back to get it repaired." Soul stops reminiscing and looks Maka in the eye. "My point is, all weapons go through this. When you don't know what you're doing, it's hard to be able to control yourself." He smiles. "And that's what I'm here for. You're lucky you're living with a scythe who is so generously willing to show you the ropes."
Maka rolls her eyes, but ultimately feels much better after what Soul has said. Though learning to control her weapon form is a challenge, having her partner here to help her through it makes it a lot better. Maka smiles at Soul.
"Thanks for the pep talk, Soul. I'm feeling better now." She nods to his arm, which she done wrapping. "And you should be better soon too. Just let me get some scissors to cut off the extra gauze."
She's getting ready to stand up, but Soul's already got his hand around her wrist. "Maka, you're a scythe. You don't need scissors."
Her green eyes widen. "Oh. Uh, right." She stares at her finger for a moment in concentration, then breaks into a giddy smile when it turns into a tiny blade. Soul beams at her proudly as she uses her scythe-finger to cut the gauze on his arm away from the rest of the roll.
"Look at you. You'll be cutting down kishins in no time."
"Yeah right," Maka says, amused. She knows that Soul is just saying that, since they already discussed that she wasn't going to use her weapon form to fight kishins. She already had a weapon, and she wasn't going to give him up. But the thought of actually being able to use her own blade as back-up someday makes her smile.
She transforms her miniature blade back to a finger with relative ease, enjoying the tingling sensation as her body returns back to its original form. She admires her hand for a few more seconds more, then finally splaying her fingers apart to see the yellowing paper covering their living room floor.
"Oh crap," she mutters, bending down to pick up the scattered pages of Frankenstein from the floor. It seems Soul wasn't the only one assaulted by Maka's blade today.
"You shredded the book when your arm transformed, didn't you?" Soul kneels down to help her pick up the remaining pages. It looks as if only the first half the book was torn apart, because the last hundred and fifty pages or so are still bound inside the cover. Maka nods mournfully nonetheless, because it's going to be next to impossible to read the book in this sorry condition. Suddenly she feels a warm hand pat her on the head, and when she looks up she sees her weapon smiling at her as he holds out the pages I his hands. "Don't worry, I'll buy you a new copy."
"You don't have to do that," she says to him, taking the tattered pages from his hands.
"Just think of it as a gift from one weapon to another. It's a lot cheaper than buying a violin, that's for sure."
Soul walks to the kitchen, presumably to get that drink that he wanted a half hour ago. Maka shuffles the papers in her hands a little, then sees Soul look over his shoulder to give her a wry grin.
"Besides, now I know that I need to keep my nerd happy, otherwise she's gonna try to slice me up."
Maka makes sure that Frankenstein connects with her partner's head this time.