Spirit is waiting.

It is something he has done for much of his life. He waited, many moons ago, for a fiery, beautiful blonde to see through him, to pull him into her arms and call him out on his longing. He waited for his baby girl to grow up, to grasp her dreams by the collar, to silence every critic that tried to stop her. To do everything she was destined to do, and without any of his help.

Now, he waits for her to smile again.

On a less... existential level, he waits outside of Maka and Soul's apartment, gas tank filled to the brim as he prepares to fulfill his duty as Trusty On-Call Airport Chauffeur.

He remembers a time when he might have been excited about this. He imagines a former version of himself pointing his thumb at his chest with a roguish wink, muttering something like "Papa's got you, Maka! Papa and his trusty four-door death machine will keep you safe!" as he slides across the hood of the car, miscalculates, and topples into the street.

He can no longer find that person when he looks in the mirror.

It has been two months. But it's been so much longer than two months. It's been ten years now of atoning for his mistakes, of praying that the love he tries to show his daughter will finally transform into something she can accept.

He is down to his barest bones, all out of gimmicks and flashy declarations. He has to do the thing he'd never done before: the thing Maka least expects from him. He has to be there. He can no longer sneak away when he gets spooked and come back the next day, lipstick on his collar and his tail between his legs.

But it's hard to be strong. Of the three of them, he's the only one who was never brave.

He taps his fingers on the steering wheel. The sunrise creeps over the tops of the buildings in the city, and he watches as dim purple hues awaken along the skyline. He tries not to let the dormant despair that lurks in the back of his brain overwhelm him.

As tough as it's been on Maka, his ex-wife's passing has been hard on him, too. Losing a partner is not easy, no matter the circumstance.

The night the news came in, he'd fallen asleep with her face branded into his eyelids. As he slept, shadows of sandy blonde hair etched themselves into a frame in his mind, backlit with little bursts of light; the ones that stick around when you've looked at something dazzlingly bright for too long.

Maka's reaction was everything he'd imagined it would be, but nothing like he'd hoped. No tear-filled phone call, no throwing her arms around him and sobbing together as their relationship magically mended before his eyes.

After hearing nothing for almost a day, he'd called her that night. She was civil, emotionless, perfectly calm. Terrifyingly so.

He digs in, holds on tighter. He calls her every night. He won't let her push him away.

That's the one thing that has changed: their nightly conversations. They've become routine. They are short, and sometimes forced, but they are the anchor that holds his days together. He is always the one who instigates them, but he cannot bring himself to be bitter.

Because he can hear the subtle break in her voice when she says, "Bye, Papa," right before the line goes dead. He wonders if she can read the sadness that lies behind every goodnight text he sends her afterwards.

She won't cry in front of him, and he can't cry in front of her. He will not blubber over this, will not ruin the strong, impenetrable front that he has constructed for himself, that he knows she can see through but that he won't abandon.

Three weeks in, he realizes in the middle of the night that Maka is the only family that he has left. The next morning, he smudges out the tear stains on his pillowcase with his wrist.

He thinks that they both might be a little bit broken.

He will never grow too old to hope. He's made mistakes, so many mistakes, and he's greedy and undeserving. There is no one to blame but himself for all that has happened, but he tries. With every fiber of his being, he will try to be a worthy father to such an extraordinary daughter.

A sound startles him and he looks to his right to see a gloved hand pulling open the door to the sedan. Maka shoots him a glance that says don't intervene before she slides into the front seat. She shuts her door with an impatient snap and the back door opens instead.

"You could've told me anytime," Soul mutters as he slides into the backseat and slams the door shut. "Literally any time, other than when we're walking out the door. We should've taken the bike, we don't need… anyone's help to get to the airport."

Spirit's eyes narrow in the rear view, and he's about to open his mouth to say something before Maka jumps in.

"Well, sorry," she snaps, sounding as not-sorry as any one person could be. "You're welcome for saving you twenty bucks on parking, by the way."

The withering look she turns around and gives Soul effectively shuts him up. He stews in the back, deciding to glare at the ceiling instead of at Maka because he values his life and - based on the quick glance he throws at Spirit - he knows he is already on one Albarn's hit list for the day.

Despite his annoyance, Spirit has to try to keep a smile from creeping across his face; not only because watching his daughter deliver a sass-beating to anyone that isn't him is one of his favorite pastimes, but also because it dawns on him that they're fighting.

He hasn't seen them bicker in so long. It feels natural in a way he'd been missing, and the familiarity is comforting.

"It's... okay," Soul finally relents, and Spirit feels his irritation ease a little more as a pang of almost-sympathy hits him.

Despite the fact that he publicly announces his disdain for Soul at every opportunity, Spirit has also realized that he's been getting soft. As much as he'd waited - hoped - for him to slip up over the years, Soul's loyalty is as unwavering as ever, and as time has gone on, Spirit actually finds himself subconsciously relying on Soul, trusting his judgement and understanding more and more when it comes to Maka.

It is a deeply unpleasant notion that he enthusiastically avoids whenever possible.

To his right, Spirit watches Maka deflate again, eyes fixing on the road ahead, and he is reminded of how far they still have to go.

"Got everything?" Spirit asks, more as a formality than anything, because, quite frankly, he can't remember the last time Maka had forgotten anything. She nods, not looking at him.

Yes, she never forgot anything. A sharp-as-a-whip memory has served her well on exams and for typical meisterly duties, but she's also got a black belt in the art of grudge-holding, and as he puts the car into drive, Spirit wonders again if he will ever make it back into her good graces.

When things get better, he'll stand outside her window and send her fire-fueled mojo for the rest of his life, if that's what it takes.

The drive is silent, so he ruminates. For the past two months, her mother's absence has led his mind down so many twisty-turny paths into the past, to times when he was well-behaved and well-adored, when he would slip her chocolates after supper while Mama's back was turned.

He thinks back to desert summers gone by, to trekking through the scorching heat in search of a marigold patch. Sunday family outings had always been Maka's favorite, her energy seemingly boundless in the heat as she laughed from her perch atop Spirit's back, tiny pigtails poking out under a white floppy hat. Mama always opted to carry the bags while Maka moved periodically from Spirit's arms to back to shoulders, chattering happily about the new names of the plants Mama had taught her about on their previous outing.

"Do you know why marigolds are the best flower, Papa?" she asked him on one particularly hot day. The heat was so strong that black mirages slithered across the sand, strips of darkness slipping into nothingness with every step they made across the desert.

"Why's that, sweetie?" he asked, looking up at her as she searched for her words, green eyes glistening with excitement.

"They're really strong!" she finally said, tiny hands taking to the skies as she gazed up at the clouds. "They can grow almost anywhere - without water, or good soil, or any of that! The only thing they don't like is the cold."

"Oh yeah?" Spirit asked.

"I… think so." Maka stopped, suddenly gripped with hesitation. "Right, Mama?" she called out.

They both looked ahead and were met with an expanse of desert stretching before them, Mama too far in the distance to hear.

He didn't have to look up to sense Maka's disappointment. Even at seven years old, she was well-accustomed to being left behind.

When they finally found marigolds, though, they dug them up, made bouquets, and took them home, bringing a little sliver of resilient desert into the house with them. Maka took full responsibility for keeping them fed, watered and beautiful, almost maternal in the way she hovered over them, helping them flourish for as long as they could.

They made it to the marigold patch for a few years afterward, but the distance they'd felt that day in the desert melted into their daily lives, subtle darkness seeping into the bright moments, into the early mornings when Mama rushed out the door without a kiss goodbye, leaving Maka sniffling over her Cheerios.

Slowly, the sweet father-daughter chocolate sneaking of their early years morphed into him sneaking away from it all, into the embrace of women who didn't push him away. He found himself seeking his own mirages, ones that didn't involve broken promises and wives who put themselves before their daughters.

Spirit knows she had loved Maka. She had gotten better, over the years; sending Maka more postcards, even packages. She'd gotten to know her better, reestablished the link they'd been missing. They rarely talked about it, but he could read it on Maka's face when a package came. She'd never lost that dewy-eyed adoration for her mother, the same adoration that she used to share with him, too.

He appreciates the effort, and knows how much joy it brought Maka, but he finds his ex-wife's attitude during Maka's youth so hard to forgive. There were so many things to do and adventures to be had, she'd say, and they were so young, and didn't he want more out of this life?

And of course he wanted. Wanting was, ultimately, the nail in the coffin, wasn't it? The thing that sent the woman he'd loved packing, her long-conceived escape plan finally validated. The thing that had set his daughter against him.

He has to remember not to shovel the blame elsewhere. Callous as her mother had been, he was no better. Being the only present parent wins him no awards, has never been enough to earn back the love of the only person whose love matters to him. He's been selfish, so selfish, and he doesn't deserve an ounce of forgiveness.

But he loves her so much, so much that he can feel new tears rip into the fabric of his heart on the more painful nights when he thinks of what she means to him, how he's failed her. His ceiling keeps him company, and he watches the flecks in the paint as he thinks of every misstep he's ever made in their relationship. He tries to keep the stuffing in his heart from leaking out at the seams. Even with all the blunders and bad memories, he is bitterly grateful that this is one part of him that Stein cannot stitch back together.

And in the meantime, he waits. He'd wait for her forever if she asked him to.

"Papa?" Maka says next to him, snapping him back into the present. He blinks frantically against the blur that had been gathering behind his eyes.

"What is it, baby girl?" he asks, trying not to sound as tired as he feels.

"...Thanks for the ride," she says. As the car pulls up to the gate, he shoots her a watery smile. She very feebly returns it, but it doesn't reach her eyes.

He doesn't know what to say as they get out of the car and start to gather their things, so he jumps out of the car and helps her get her backpack on.

"I know it might not be easy," he hedges as she turns around to face him. "But… call if you can?"

She looks up at him, pigtails blowing slightly in the dry Nevada wind. She's grown so much, but right now, all of a sudden, she looks very small. It makes him want to pick her up on his shoulders and carry her through the desert again.

Instead, she's headed to the cold. The only place where marigolds don't grow.

"I can't promise," she says, eyes trained on the airport doors. "But I can try. Maybe."

Soul's eyes fix on her for a moment and then he looks at Spirit. Spirit can't tell what he's trying to say, but the little nod Soul gives him makes him feel a little glad that she won't be alone out there.

… And she certainly won't be alone, he realizes with a jolt as two very familiar faces appear at the same doors Maka had just been staring at, dragging suitcases behind them.

"Heeeeeeey, Maka! What a coincidence!" Black*Star's unmistakable voice booms from the doorway, accompanied by a sheepish wave from Tsubaki from beside him. Spirit watches as Soul's eyes fix back onto the sky, mentally preparing himself as Maka's narrowed eyes slide in his direction.

"What. Are. They. Doing. Here," she grits out, and Spirit knows, in that moment, that Soul's feigned innocence will not save him. When each one of Maka's words becomes its own sentence, Spirit knows it's time to plan his escape route, and he jumps back into the car.

Comforted by the fact that she's in good hands, he leans out the car window and says, "See you soon, sweetheart!" Surprisingly, she does turn to him and give him a small wave, though the irritation on her face is still immutable.

Behind her, the three of them are waving at him too, and unbidden, his watery smile returns. It hits him that even with a pair of highly imperfect parents, Maka has managed to build her own little family.

On the way home, he thinks back on Maka's fascination with marigolds: how they are tenacious, determined to grow. To flourish where they're planted, despite what the world throws their way.

He decides that marigolds are tougher than they're given credit for, and he thinks that maybe, with the right conditions and the right amount of love, they just might survive the cold.