Resonance: Professor

Stine has seen them fight together.

It is a seamless act and from the outside –from the perspective of a normal observer- she wields him. It is she who calls the shots and supplies the energy. It is her barely tempered anger and sheer will that drives them forward and gives her motion its hyper-paced tempo.

This is not the case.

It is the first time he has resonated with them in any capacity, a chain resonance that gives him his first look into their connection.

He is made aware, automatically, that Soul is the better tactician of the pair. Stine dimly feels Soul give Maka an instruction, an order to move. She does so, without hesitation or thought or argument.

If he were to pay attention (and he would like to, but he is occupied by the soul of a witch in the body of a small blonde girl) he would notice that Soul only orders Maka to defend herself. The weapon mentions openings in their opponent's defenses out of a sense of thoroughness. Soul is already aware that Maka needs no help attacking something.

In the back of his mind Stine keeps watching them.

There is a trust between the pair that he did not expect to find.

Their resonance rate is much more stable than it was when they were new to each other. When they had to force their souls together and quiet their minds enough to let the other in. Stine can feel the memory of that humming underneath their resonance even now, in the middle of battle.

They are joined seamlessly, mind and soul. Stine can feel the static of something surrounding them, a separation between him and the pair of them. A shielding translucent barrier. It surprises him. The feel of it is tidy and clean, strong. Very strong.

If he had to guess he would credit the barrier to Maka, the flavor of her soul supports the static film, rests just behind it and seems to coat it.

He is impressed at her, at the length she would go to in ensuring her partner's safety. (It was he who told her that misters can attack the minds of other weapons through any level of chain resonance.) He can feel the black blood in both of them, more so in the weapon than the mister. He feels the slight urge to ask her if she has been shielding both of them in every chain resonance. Or if she chose to shield them in this resonance because he had so recently been under Medusa's influence. (He felt the marks the black blood had left on his soul and mind. He knew Maka could probably sense them there.)

Maybe she had always put some sort of barrier between the two of them, to protect their most private thoughts and quiet mental workings. After all, if their connection became too complete, their resonance rate near perfect… their entire minds would be sprawled open upon each other. An entire lifetime of thought and feeling, all those memories and images would overcrowd and weigh down on them both.

He wondered if Soul maintained a barrier between them that filtered out all of the excess thought. Perhaps Maka maintained a barrier between herself and her weapon, as well as a barrier around them?

He would have to ask her sometime. When they were not so busy with the task at hand.

Stine turns his focus back to the two of them, the electric and ocean calm feel of their connection. It is not built on their trust in their own abilities. Not completely, anyway.

Stine understands, implicitly, that they are of equal strength.

It may be Maka's emotion that provides her energy (and in turn gives her the stamina needed to wield her partner) but it is Soul that sets their tempo. Soul that holds her back and drives her forward if need be.

Stine is not sure how the weapon does that. He hears the blonde haired jacket clad scythe mister scream out, a battle cry laced and loaded with defiance and rage. Stine wonders how anyone as calm as Soul Evans manages complete harmony with Maka.

Stine feels Marie laugh at his interest and confusion regarding the pair.

Of course.

It is so logical, so effortlessly simple that he is amazed he did not understand it before. That it took observation from this perspective to comprehend.

Maka Albarn is every bit as skilled as her famed mother. (And, if he was being honest with himself, the young scythe mister had already surpassed the legacy left to her)

It stands to reason that Soul Evans was just as talented as his partner.

Resonance: Battle vs. Free

This is not the first time they have resonated.

He feels her frustration seep into their connection and she can feel him smirking.

They both silently recognize that this is the hardest resonance they have preformed to date. This is even more difficult than their first attempts.

Because they were new to the art then, the connection they had took focus, effort. They were alike in their inexperience and hesitation. The first times they opened their minds up, really blew them wide and invited each other in were much different than this.

This is the hardest resonance.

It is barely stable, she feels angry at their instability (because it is not perfection) and he feels pissed off that she is so critical and demanding of them both. He wants to scream the story of every last one of their joint failures at her, as loud as he can. He is sick of her trying to make them perfect.

She is sick of them not reaching perfection. Because, in her mind, Soul is more capable than her pathetic father and she herself is nearly as skilled as the academy's best mister. (We nearly beat Stine, she recalls with a mental prod in Soul's direction.)

Their wavelengths are disjointed, shuddering as they try to hold together and maintain the binding that both mister and weapon need to function as a unit.

She is trying to force his wavelength to line up with hers, while ignoring every negative thing she has ever said about her. She is trying to pretend she doesn't give a damn about his opinion.

He is pressing against her soul, trying to force it back into calm alignment. (Because even in battle, while she expresses anger and lets rage drive them both… her soul is calm.) Today he cannot find any of that calm in her, so he tries to delve deeper into his mister. He begins to search about in her mind, and it is then that she shuts him out completely.

She reminds him, brutally, that he cannot just go inside her thoughts without permission. The rest of her connection to him begins to ice over, the emotional unison fading out as his awareness of her presence in his own soul vanishes.

Just before their resonance fails he looks past his own confusion and anger, spotting the hurt she is so valiantly trying to keep from him.

He lets the connection between them break down as he lets his mind race through a series of assumptions… coming to the conclusion that something he did managed to hurt her.

And that is why they cannot resonate. She will not trust her soul with him, not if she feels hurt and exposed to more harm.

He lets himself mull over everything that happened in the last two days. Normally he would not have time for non-battle oriented thinking, but since his mind is not occupied by a resonance link or the need to analyze the fighting style of their opponent… he currently has the time.

He is dimly aware that she is trying to wield him. He already knows she will be unsuccessful, he can sense that his weapon form is burning her. He isn't too heavy for her to lift (she is stronger than she looks) but her gloves are doing nothing to protect her from how searing hot the metal staff has become.

He winces a bit as he hears her whisper words of encouragement to herself. It is normally his voice keeping her focused in battle, now, in his absence, she is trying to maintain her composure alone.

It takes him a fraction of a moment to understand that even if she could hold onto him (he was sure there would be burn scars on her hands now) the opponent before her could not be killed. The best outcome would be to wound the immortal and get the heck out of dodge.

Attached to that understanding is an even simpler truth, the scythe mister could not accomplish that task alone.

He sends a spark of his soul out toward hers, astonished and grateful that she has left her soul wide open and exposed. She doesn't' feel him try to connect to her at first; she is busier ignoring the livewire pain in her hands and the screaming fear that has begun to speed her heart rate. She is hell-bent on them making it off this bridge.

Soul catches that thought slide across the thin connection he has made to her mind. He feels pride for her.

As gently as he can manage (the hot metal against the tips of her fingers and the red-raw skin of her palms makes him feel guilt) he reaches her soul and mind and spreads out himself. There is nothing he can hide from her, and he hopes it will be enough.

She brushes back, grasping the connection he made in her and re-establishing their resonance.

In a rush he pulls his emotion forward, coupling it with his memory and showing it to her. He needs her to know he understands that he hurt her, that he isn't quite sure how… that he wants to apologize. He is her weapon, it echoes about in his mind and she hears it like a repeatedly whispered lyric, his job is to protect her, not cause harm.

There is more, flashing in the connection between them, he keeps pulling forward more memories and more images (her hands trying to hold onto the unholy heat of the scythe is an image colored with his reverence) and he wants her to know that she cannot fight her battles alone.

He would not allow it.

She feels him smirk as he tugs their souls into alignment. There is a murmur about continuing this conversation when they return home.

They resonate properly and although Maka feels flashes of doubt toward her weapon…

Even as she throws aside the scythe to forcibly remove the immortal from the bridge, a quick snarl loosed at the back of her throat, the satisfaction that followed and the panic at the heels of it all

… she can feel his relief drown her through their link as his hand wraps around her ankle.

END.

Author's note: I do not own Soul Eater.

I am aware that Soul is not often referred to by anything more than his first name. However, I felt that since I was using the word "soul" and the name "Soul" quite often in rapid fire… a distinction needed to be made.

I also like the feel of the name Soul Evans; it contrasts with Maka's nicely.

The first portion of this chapter may be a bit hard to make sense of. My apologies. It is taken from cannon, when Maka and Stine perform a chain resonance so that Stine can communicate with Maka. This takes place in the anime version of the series, just before the fight.

I figured that Stine would keep the chain resonance in place (so he could keep track of Maka's location during the fight/battle) and because it would allow him to more closely observe the mister/weapon pair. By this time Maka is already more skilled than her mother was, Stine would undoubtedly want to see her at work.

As for the second part of this chapter…

It takes place during and directly before the fight between the immortal wolf/witch Free and Maka/Soul. I am fully aware that they are not the only ones who are present on the bridge during that battle. I just preferred to keep the focus on the two of them, since there was a lot going on inside their minds in that sequence.

Also, the writing involving their resonance was not a super-clear cut bit of work. It is emotional and non-specific and hazy by design. Though, if anything is unclear please ask. I will reply to questions within the best of my ability.