A/N: This part was added later, sort of slap-dash, because I am really bad at leaving everyone miserable. Like, really bad.


For the next few days, they were ghosts.

They existed in the same space, but passed each other by without touch or sound. Not even their friends or other classmates approached them. Everyone whispered that they looked haunted.

Soul found Tsubaki first, quietly and without fanfare. They didn't need to say much. They'd both been aching to end it since the moment it started, but didn't know how when they were the only solace the other had. She smiled and kissed his cheek.

Tsubaki sat next to Maka on the patch of grass where she read. They said nothing at all. Maka dropped her book and hugged her friend. Tears stained their clothes.

Black Star challenged Soul to a dual, which Soul lost spectacularly. After the dust settled, Star offered his hand, pulled him to standing, decked him in the jaw, then helped him back up again. He supposed he deserved it. He decked Star back. They shook hands.

Then came the hard part.

Soul's skin felt like it was going to crawl right off his body. He stood outside the apartment door, hand poised above the knob. He didn't know what he was waiting for. If she was home, she already knew he was there. And now she knew he'd been standing there for five full minutes.

He turned the knob and came inside, removing his shoes and hanging his jacket without looking around. His hair provided a pretty effective shield. He could keep his head inclined and just keep walking. Shut himself in his room like he'd done every night.

No. Not tonight.

She sat curled up in the armchair, her eyes trained on a book, just like always. Her eyes weren't moving across the page. She was waiting.

He crossed the room and sat on the arm of the chair with his back to her. It was the closest they'd been in weeks. He heard her book close with a soft rustle of pages.

They sat like that for a while.

He turned his head to the side so she could hear him. "I looked for you. For days."

"And I told you what happened as soon as you found us. We didn't try to hide it. You don't know what it was like, being cut off from everyone after everything."

"I do," he growled. "I thought I'd lost you. I was going out of my head."

"But you didn't. I did lose someone."

He shifted in his seat, exhaled, and looked at her, finally.

She met his gaze and held it, unwavering. "Black Star was there and you weren't. That's all there was to it."

He stood then, scrubbing his nails over his scalp and making his hair stand on end. "Not by choice! You know only hell opening up could separate me from my meister, and well, it did." He bared his teeth and looked at her sidelong. "I'd follow you anywhere if I could. If you let me."

She put down her book and stood before him. "Because I'm your meister?"

"Because you're my friend," he said, hands shoved deep in his pockets.

"Is that what we are?" she asked. "Friends?"

"I don't know," he said. "I'm not sure what we are anymore. But I know I will always keep looking for you. I wish you'd trust in that."

Hesitantly, she raised her hands in front of her and licked her lip. "Resonate with me."

He blinked at her. It'd been a while since they'd resonated together. The last time they'd tried it, things... had not gone well. Even so, he removed his hands from his pockets and slipped his fingers through hers, leaning down until their foreheads touched. They closed their eyes.

The first tendril of her soul to touch his felt like a jolt and he had to force himself not to pull back. Their souls felt each other out, reaching and stuttering. At last, their breaths synced and things locked into place, both familiar and completely different then they both remembered. His body shifted in her hands, snapping into form. Her grip was tentative at first, but solidified quickly.

They went deep, walking out across the surface of a dark lake to meet one another in the middle. Ripples of light spread wherever they stepped. When they were close enough, she took his hand.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

He smiled. "Yeah. Let's do it."

They fell through the surface together, the doors of their hearts and minds flung wide.

She saw through his eyes as the rift opened, as she and Black Star were flung out of his sight, out of his senses. His throat was raw from calling her name. He cycled through panic, helplessness, fury at his own weakness. She had to be okay. She was out there. He would find her.

He saw her father die and felt the tornado of emotion tearing her apart. She loved Papa. She hated him. She wanted him back. Black Star pulled her along, forced her through the pain. Through it all was a constant emptiness, an undercurrent of complete vulnerability without her weapon at her side.

Soul and Tsubaki were frantic, sleepless. People told them to rest and he hurled all the most colorful varieties of "fuck off" his vocabulary contained in every direction. He'd sleep when she was safe or he was dead, whichever came first.

The night was cold and Black Star was trying to keep her warm, trying to keep himself warm. She wanted to cry, but dehydration wouldn't allow it. Instead, they found one another's mouths and wanted to forget, wanted to feel anything but what they were feeling.

As they moved in the dark, she thought Soul's name.

He found them in the morning, calling out as he ran toward the outcropped rock, Tsubaki running beside him. He poured water through Maka's cracked lips and they clung to each other, drowning in the desert.

She felt the way the pain in his scar split him open when she told him what had happened between her and Black Star, because she didn't want to hide it.

They both understood that they'd been dancing around each other, hurting one another to maintain the rift that kept them from looking too far inside. There were flashes of moans and heat, followed by profound loneliness.

Underneath it all, shifting beneath their skin like blood, something started to glow and they broke the surface.

His body turned back to flesh. Their hands clasped so tightly they hurt; their foreheads still touched.

"Are we friends?" she said, tears leaking through her closed eyes.

"No," he answered. "We've always been something else."

They tilted their mouths forward, cautious and testing. When their lips brushed once, twice, their breaths hitched.

Then they jumped the rift.

Everything else was practice. This was reality. Lips and tongues and teeth, sensations lighting them up like Roman candles. They knew exactly how to touch, exactly how to breathe. In tandem, like dancing. When he ran his fingers along her skin, she reacted, always and forever, and his soul swelled. When she fit against him a hundred different ways, it was tender, and it was kind. They were full, so full.

Palms pressed together, fingers laced.

"Stay with me," they whispered. "Stay with me, stay with me, stay with me."