AN: Hey! I don't own anyone here… sad… no… waah! Please review, this is my first time!

"Tsubaki, what happened to you?" Blackstar said, face intense as always.

"Nothing." I answered, putting on a bright face. I could act like everything was normal. I could do this. I loved him. I loved Maka. I could do this much for them.

"Tsubaki. I know it wasn't nothing." Blackstar looked ready to explode. I would have fed him the same line about my brother but he would never have bought it. He knew me too well.

"Blackstar. If I say it was nothing, it was nothing." I hesitated. I didn't want to do this. This seemed to just be one of those days, to have to play every card I didn't want to. "I don't ask for much. But this was nothing."

"Damn it, Tsubaki!" Blackstar yelled, punching the table. "Why are you doing this to me?"

I thought about Maka, about her slender legs and slim body. I thought about the way she held Soul after her hands burned, the way she chopped through her adversaries. I saw her dancing with her Papa and talking about her Mama and the way her eyes shone whenever she got a new book. I heard her voice when she killed the Keeshan. If that's the kind of girl that Blackstar wanted, what was I? I was tall and too big and shy. I always volunteered to do whatever they wanted, always compromised. If I had been more like Maka, if I had gotten better grades, studied harder... would it had made a difference? Would Blackstar love me?

I looked away from him, the anger and pain in his face suddenly unbearable. I was his sister. Or his mother. "Could you get the peroxide? I don't want this to get infected, and I'm going to have a hard time cleaning it out by myself."

Blackstar closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. When he let it out he stomped into the bathroom and came out a minute later with the medical kit. I laid down on the couch, and the familiar rhythm of getting a wound treated relaxed me. "Thanks." I murmured when he was done.

He didn't look at me. His knuckles were white around the doorknob to the bathroom as he slammed the door. I sighed. This was going to be a long night.

I went into my room, changing into some shorts that wouldn't catch on the bandage that Blackstar had tied too tightly, angrily, over the scrape. I pulled on a t-shirt and then let my hair down. It was already past eight thirty and I hadn't made dinner. I wondered idly when the last time we'd ordered out had been. Probably when we'd first moved in together, I decided with a grin, smearing on some strawberry chapstick. And Blackstar decided that he should try cooking. Not only did he start a grease fire boiling water, but he later told me that he was trying to make salad.

I felt a little better as I knocked hesitantly on the side of his door frame, peeking my head into his room. "Blackstar? Did you eat out with Maka?"

Blackstar turned around hastily. "No. We were about to go for pizza when Liz called."

"Oh." I say softly. I still don't know exactly what happened, but he's angry with me and now's not a good time to go probing around in that business. "I'm sorry for worrying everyone. I didn't think..." I trail off, since I wasn't really thinking at the time. I was just desperate to get away from everything, no matter what.

"Anyway, I was thinking maybe we could order out, since we never do. Does that sound good to you?" I add a little more cheerfully.

Blackstar turns around, and his eyes look a little shiny. Is he getting sick? "Yeah. That sounds good."

I just stand there for a second, unsure of what to do. Should I go and order Chinese? Check his temperature? Apologize again for interrupting his date?

"She broke up with me." He blurts out. The room is dead silent, even quieter than it was before, and then I'm holding him and he's the one sobbing into my chest. It's broken, but basically she couldn't handle him. Blackstar would go all insane in public and it would embarrass her and no matter how many times he said he wouldn't he just couldn't stop.

"You understand, right, Tsubaki?" He says, staring up in my eyes. My heart stutters out something that can't be healthy and I gulp. We're sitting on his bed like we have been for the past half hour, food (chinese or otherwise) long forgotten while he poured out his heart to me. The tears stopped fourteen or so minutes in. "We'd be sitting in a movie theater eating popcorn and she'd whisper something to me and I'd go to whisper back and I'd be standing in front of the projector yelling something."

I never knew it was like that for him. I thought that Blackstar was just... well, Blackstar. But this Blackstar, the one that could focus on me right here and now – that was the one that I love.

I smile at him. "Of course I understand. I've been your partner since we were twelve."

Blackstar smiles back and I feel like I'm standing on the sun. Maka has her own sun waiting at home for her every day, she just doesn't know it yet. And when she does realize it, she's going to stop dropping its IQ.

I knock his shoulder gently with my own, like I used to with my brother. "Come on." I say. "You must be starving."

"Yeah." He says reluctantly. "I guess so."

I ordered the food, and he just pointed to what he wanted on the menu. I snuck worried glances at him. I didn't mind him being so quiet, but it wasn't normal for him. That was kind of my job. I wasn't used to making the conversation, but I did my best, asking him about how his day was. Normally just that would set him off for an hour, telling me all about everything he did the entire time he was away from me, even though that was often just a short period of time with Soul or a brief drama in the locker room.

Instead he just shrugged and glanced away. "Fine. Stein said that if I could have an extra week for that project because of Sikui."

I nodded, a bit deflated. He had already told us all at lunch, but it was still better than nothing. Sikui had been our seventeenth soul, but Blackstar got hurt badly in the fight and missed the next day's lessons, which explained how to do the project. It was another dissecting one, which I hated. Stein was supposed to be a genius, but I wished that he wasn't so obsessed with dissection. He was a good person, I knew, though the madness troubled him. I felt bad for Marie, who was always waiting for him to realize that she had feelings for him. I'm not even sure if sometimes that he could reciprocate.

I wince at how mean that sounded, even in my head. I worry about Marie, and Stein, more than I should. I always worry about other people more than I should. That reminds me – Blackstar's eyes were a little glazed earlier, but that was just because he was crying. I misread that too.

I think about the true or false problem on Stein's exam while I try and cheer Blackstar up, putting on his favorite movie and checking the fridge for ice cream. Girl or not, chocolate fudge ripple helps. Maybe it doesn't have any relation to real life, but it feels like it does. It's always like that for me. Blackstar is always going to be there for you: True or false. True, definitely true.

Then why was it false? Maka was so much better at these kind of problems, in real life, at school. All I could do was be nice to both of them and hope that Blackstar didn't realize that I loved him in a non-sister non-mother way before I became a death scythe.

The doorbell rings and I grin at Blackstar, telling him I'll be right back with enough chou mein to make his stomach explode. He smiles a little and I open the door, already pulling the money out of the heart lockbox we keep it in because it looks like a little girl's jewelry box. I'm apologizing for making him carry it up all the stairs but the elevator is out, and the hall manager is always drunk or high, so the tip will be twenty five percent, and it's Maka.

Her eyes are red and she keeps wiping them like she doesn't know what else to do. Her nose is running and one pig tail is slipping out of it's invisible rubberband. "I'm so sorry. For coming here." Her voice is still controlled, calm, through all of it. "But, Tsubaki, Soul and me had the mother of all fights and I can't go to Kid's because Liz and Patty're staying over at Kim's and..."

Maka trailed off, fidgeting. She pulled at the sleeve of her jacket nervously, not able to make eye contact with me. I couldn't make my mouth move. "I'm sorry." She whispered, and this time her voice did crack.

I hugged my best friend - the Chinese food guy chose then to show up. He was getting a thirty percent tip, wasn't he? I ushered them both into the apartment, got him to set the food on the table so that I could sign the receipt and set Maka up in my room while Blackstar was still glued obliviously to the tv.

It was better for him if he didn't know she was here, at least while he was finally cheering up a little. Maybe now I could – what? We had ordered way too much food, especially because Blackstar just picked at his.

Even though I felt like doing the same, I shove big chopstick-fulls of noodles into my mouth, making encouraging noises like he's a baby. This is the airplane and open the hanger... but he wasn't buying it.

"Tsubaki." He said, dropping the fork he was poking at his food with. I had tried to teach him to use the traditional way, but that had gone over about as well as cooking. "I... I think you should know why me and Maka started going out in the first place."

I can tell that this is his way of saying sorry, his face still soft and open from sitting on his bed and talking with me. I know Maka's in the other room and that she needs me too, but she doesn't seem quite as important right now. "You don't have to."

I brush my hair back, the unfamiliar looseness of having it down still throwing me off a little. It brushed my body in places I wasn't used to, and I gathered it up in my lap just to have it all in one place again for the control.

Blackstar shook his head, and his eyes narrowed. "No." He gestured to my leg sharply. "You'd tell me what happened if I hadn't lied."

And it's out there. The truth. I swallow, and we both hear it. He winces, and shakes his head. "Yeah, I thought so."

I don't like this side of Blackstar, but I know I deserve it. I sit up a little straighter, and wait to hear the rest of the story. No. His confession. I deserve this. I deserve this for not knowing. For not noticing the signs, for not keeping him from this pain. From this heartbreak. I should have been the only one to go through this kind of pain. There should not have been two of us.

"When she turned seventeen, two weeks ago, she got really drunk, remember? All of you weapons were out on that practical training exercise, and she flipped. I've never seen Maka so -" He faltered, and it was like words failed him. There was pain in his eyes. "She was hurting. Really bad. Now that I really think back on it, I don't know if she thought I was Soul, but she obviously thought she had an... obligation to stay with me for a little while after that." His face twisted. "She didn't want to tell anyone, and I didn't either, because I thought that it wouldn't last, honestly."

He gulped some water down, hard. I held his shoulder, but I knew that I wasn't the one he needed right now. My room mate. One of my best friends. I looked at him, trying to see if there was anything I could do, anything else I could give him to make him feel better. Ice cream and movies couldn't fix this.

But I had to tell him something. Something that he might not forgive me for. I bit down onto my tongue hard, focusing on the sensation spreading from my left molar. Cool fire. So much better than the nausea choking its way up through my stomach. Weaving up my throat.

"Tsubaki?" Blackstar said. He looked scared. My vision was going a little hazy. Breathe. Breathe? How do you breathe? "Are you ok?"

In. Out. Right. Ok. I could do this.

"Blackstar, I'm really sorry. But I did something." I blurt out. "Maka had a big fight with Soul when she got home, and she couldn't go to Kid's, and I thought she was the Chinese guy, she's in my bedroo -"

My hand. Why does my hand look like that? It's the wrong shape. It should be bent the other way. What happened? It was on Blackstar's shoulder, wasn't it? My brain is slow, pushing through the thick, black mud, trying to understand what happened. He pushed it off and it looked like this.

And then he left. I wish someone would make that noise stop. What is that noise? It's so high. Please. Someone make the noise stop.

AN: Woah. That came out intense. I don't know what happened. Please tell me what you think!