It was dark. For a moment that was all she could process. Then the pain came, and she wasn't able to process anything at all.
Soul sat alone, it was easier to think that way. Even now the thought twisted his face into a sardonic grin, him think? Oh, she would have laughed at that. And then the depression came back, but he had long gotten used to its presence, like a dulled lens that let him view life the way it should look. It was comforting in a way, knowing that her death made a difference, knowing that it changed something, that she didn't die for nothing, that he was paying the price.
"Yahoo!" he could hear the distant calls of (for whatever reason) his best friend and vaguely wondered if he should hide before deciding against it seeing as it would take too much effort.
"Soul my man, guess who your God beat today? What no idea? It's okay I forgive you, not everyone can know as much as me! Well Kid was..." After that Soul just kind of tuned him out, he was used to his ramblings and learned long ago how uncool it looked to start shouting at BlackStar to shut up. He leaned back for the long haul, watching the rambunctious little ninja animatedly tell a story about some basketball game or another.
When his thoughts drifted they always tended to drift towards her. Maka. She was his first partner, more than his best friend, his meister. And it had been his dut-
He quickly pulled away from that dark abyss, feeling his fingernails start to dig into his palms. 'Deep breaths' it was his new mantra. DWMA had a resident psychologist (of course), apparently he was some expert or another on trauma and loss, a war veteran himself, but all that skinny little bastard could come up with was, 'deep breaths Soul, whenever you feel the urge to start punishing yourself just take deep breaths.' Of course there had been other things as well, but that had stuck with him the most. Never more had there been a time when Soul had wanted to punch someone more.
Suddenly Soul phased back into the real world, the absence of sound shocking him as he turned to face BlackStar. "It's been two years man." He looked serious, which was becoming a more usual occurrence with him (Maka would have been surprised), but Soul had heard this conversation many times before. He knew all the right answers, knew exactly what to say to shut him up. But today he couldn't, not today, not so close to the anniversary.
Soul left, he wanted to shout, wanted to scream, wanted to break things. But he had done all that. So now he just left. BlackStar didn't follow him.
He went back home. He knew it was unhealthy, but he couldn't bring himself to leave the place that they had shared. Perhaps if he got a new meister. Immediately the thought made him cringe, his brain shouting at him, a small voice in the back of his head screamed betrayal. His fingernails started to dig into his palms again, 'deep breaths'. It would be okay, no matter how much Kid or Lord Death pressured him he would never take a new partner. Yet, he couldn't stop himself from looking around at the empty apartment, two years had changed it. He turned on the TV before taking a shower, listening to the voices in the next room while he cleaned away a day's worth of grime. He did his best from letting his thoughts wander this time.