A/N: This is Sad Eater. Warning for minor character death.

The sun shone brightly that day, which felt like an immense cosmic joke. There should be rain. Snow. Gray, weeping, fragile sky.

But no. Golden sunshine for miles.

Everything in her felt like thin ice that could break any second, and she wanted the world to reflect that. She demanded it.

One breath. Another.

Her heels were too loud on the steps of the church. Echoing, echoing. Everyone stared at her, all of them wrapped in black and judgment. Maybe she was seeing things, but it was hard to read his mother's glare as anything but filled with bitterness.

Wes would have told her she was imagining it, that his parents loved her, even if her father made a modest income and her mother was never around and she had a short temper for passive-aggressive blueblood sniping. It was a lie, but it was a pretty lie, and he'd told it to her again and again. In the light, in the dark, through a smile, through a kiss.

Two breaths. Two more.

The carpet was stupid. Red and patterned. Gaudy. Who carpeted a church this way? Everything smelled of must and incense and it was agony. She yanked her [black] coat off and hung it on a [black] hanger in the entryway. The diamond on her ring finger glinted in the pathetic light and she clenched her fist, an unexpected lightning bolt of pain searing its way through her body. She wished it would kill her.

A breath. A breath.

Lilies lined the hall, white as his hair.

She hadn't attended the viewing. It was family only, and though she was technically almost family, she knew she wasn't welcome. This was the first time she'd see him since… since…

Wes laughed in the morning light, leaning forward around his coffee mug. They were talking about nothing, about everything. She couldn't remember. But he laughed, and he kissed her goodbye. Concert in New York City later. Surprise, surprise. She rarely attended, and she knew it made him sad. What else could she do, when she couldn't make sense of the notes? They were beautiful, that she knew, but when he tried to get her to dig deeper, she came up empty. Always empty.

They were destined to crash and burn.

His chest, stained with blood behind the viewing glass. Her screams, palms beating until they went numb. The nurse's arms, dragging her away. A line on a screen, flat and still.

The queue into the main hall grew shorter and her breathing picked up. She turned her veins to steel, locked her sorrow tight. The casket came into view, all dark wood and expensive satin. Only the best for their boy.

It didn't look like him. Her heart blackened and flaked to pieces as she stared down at this wax doll pretending to be the man she loved. Cheap imitation. Silent and smooth and lifeless.

Lifeless. Lifeless.

Something on the casket caught her eye and she looked closer. Paint, red and yellow and black. A circle with a curl, a smirking smile. On the corner of a casket that had easily cost more than she made in six months, someone had etched laughter and pride.

She put her hand to her mouth and barely managed to catch her sob. The sight of her fiancé's body hadn't broken her, but this little reminder of life left unlived had done it. She ran. She couldn't do it. Couldn't stand around, all silent tears and stiff upper lip, and pretend herself fancy. This wasn't her world. It never had been. Wes had been the bridge, and he was gone.

Gone, gone, gone.

Outside, the sun still spilled itself over the steps and she collapsed, her skin warming on the concrete. Tears tore themselves up from the depths of her soul, cascading over her face and dripping into her lap. How could the world keep moving without him in it?

In the depths of her despair, she registered a warm body settling down next to her. When she got herself together enough to look, her heart gave a jolt like it had seen a ghost.

He looked so much like Wes, but he wasn't Wes. Younger and wearing a pinstriped suit with a red tie that Wes never would have dared wear to an occasion as conservative as this. Their hair was the same shining white, but this young man wore his in the sort of messy spikes that implied bedhead, but were really done up on purpose. She wiped the last of her tears from her eyes and stared into his, which were red as blood to Wes' purplish-blue.

The newcomer cleared his throat. "I'm sorry if I upset you," he said. His voice was deep and dark, lacking her fiancé's natural warmth. He twisted her coat in his hands and held it out to her. She took it.

"I don't… what?" she asked.

He gestured over his shoulder. "My drawing. I did it to piss my parents off, mostly, and because Wes would have thought it was funny. But it made you cry. I'm sorry."

She blinked and something clicked in the back of her memory. "You're Soul. His brother."

"Yeah," he said with a glance out of the corner of his eye. "Family fuck-up, at your service."

Without a thought, she waved her hand, dismissing his self-admonishment. "Wes used to talk about you a lot. He missed you."

Soul's brows shifted on his forehead, unable to decide whether to form an expression of surprise or annoyance. "He always was kind of mushy about that shit, I guess."

She watched his face. He didn't look directly at her and tried to keep his expression neutral, but she could see the cracks showing through. His mouth was too tight and his eyes too shifty, like he was holding something inside he didn't want anyone to see. But she'd loved an Evans once already, and she knew how to see beyond the WASP-y buttoned-up stiffness.

"I'm sorry for your loss," she said, reaching out and touching the hand he rested on his knee.

Abandoning all pretense, he let his shock shine through. "What? You were going to marry him. I mean, right? You're Maka?"

She nodded, another searing line of pain cutting through her.

"Then I should be giving you condolences. We talked on holidays and birthdays. You're the one who lost something."

With a sad smile, she said, "It's okay to hurt. I know he loved you. I think you loved him, too, even though you're pretending you were practically strangers."

And suddenly, without warning, his expression crumpled the tiniest bit. His breath shuddered.

They sat in silence for a moment.

Hymns flowed out of the cracked door behind them and they turned to listen.

"We're missing it," he said.

"I can't go back," she said. "He's not in there."

They held one another's eye.

"You want to go down the road and get coffee?" he said.

"Yes," she said. "I'd like that."

One breath. Standing.

Walking toward the sun.