The first day of school dawns with hazy clouds and a sun that's always too bright. Soul watches it creep above the horizon with a consistency and steadiness he envies after another night without sleep.
He lingers in the shower, turning the temperature hotter and hotter until tears mix with the water sluicing down his face and he's panting with the effort to endure its punishing heat. When it's really too much to bear, he turns the faucet off and takes a moment to look at himself in the mirror - red, red, always so much red - before toweling off and throwing on a tee shirt with some fraying jeans. After taking a few steps and nearly tripping as his pants slide down below his hips, he grabs a belt and cinches it to its smallest hole.
Dressed and mostly presentable, he wanders through the house until he ends up in the kitchen, stares blankly at the pantry, and drifts towards the garage. He rarely gets hungry before noon anyway - no need to spend the morning nauseous just because it's the first day and you have to start good habits early, Soul. His mother's portrait smiles at him from the adjoining hall, next to his father and brother, but he looks studiously at the crease where wall meets floor as he makes his way to the garage.
Weariness pulls at his legs while he nudges up the kickstand and straddles the bike, weighs on his arms as he points the front wheel towards the road. It's going to be a long day.
Just like all the others.
He parks at his usual spot when he arrives at Death City High, the dull chatter of reunited friends grating in the background as he shuffles up the stairs and through the peeling double doors. Belatedly, he pulls out the crumpled letter he somehow remembered to save that has his locker assignment and class schedule and heads toward the locker bay at the end of the hallway.
Chipping green paint and a tarnished brass number plate - number thirteen, of course - greet him as he dumps his bag on the floor to fiddle with his lock. When he finally manages to get it open, he unlatches the locker and shoves his bag in, pausing for a moment before grabbing a pen from one of its pockets. Guess it couldn't hurt to seem like he's trying, at least on the first day.
He closes his locker with a yawn that quickly becomes a gasping choke because Maka is right there, scant feet away, unmistakable in those combat boots while she digs around in her own chipped green locker.
She slams it closed and then he's staring into green eyes that widen when they meet his, and Soul automatically connects the faint freckles on her cheeks into the constellations Wes had taught them those summer nights when practice lasted far beyond sunset.
Maka recovers faster than he does, stepping into his space and reaching for his hand, all the while pinning him with those eyes that still haven't left his. It feels like she's scanning his very soul, brushing past the cracks and fissures and all the ugliness he's tried to keep inside for so long until she gets a glimpse of him, the real him, not this shell he's currently rotting away in. He shivers under a gaze that shouldn't feel so safe, so familiar, but he can't bring himself to look away.
The bell rings and the spell is broken. Soul spins on his heel and walks in the opposite direction, nearly careening into a couple of broad-shouldered football players but not caring about potential swirlies as long as he gets far, far away from her. Looks like his plan of ignoring her return is going to be a lot harder now that they're practically locker mates, but at least he doesn't have to worry about seeing her in class. She'd always been so clever and studious that the only place that makes sense for her is in the advanced classes, while Soul has barely scraped by enough to get into the next grade.
Morning classes drip by about as slowly as he expected, and he passes the time tracing veins on his arm with an overgrown fingernail, pressing down just hard enough to leave a white afterimage in the wake of the nail.
Lunchtime eventually arrives, and with it the tedious task of finding a place to sit. This is when he'll be most vulnerable to a Maka attack, barring the beginning and end of the day, though he can just come in early and leave late to mitigate that eventuality.
After scanning the cafeteria - no sign of loose blonde hair, so different than the pigtails she used to wear - he finds a seat in the corner where he can properly fade into the background. Right when he takes a bite of his lukewarm chicken patty, he hears the warmth of her laughter from a few tables over and furtively glances her way just as she's sitting down with Tsubaki.
Their eyes meet again and he feels that same pull, that same nostalgic safety he's felt each time he'd looked at her. But this time he's ready. With as cold a glare as he can muster while vaguely aware that he's really just trying to look deeper into her eyes, he breaks eye contact and stalks toward the hallway, deciding to wait out the lunch wave under the staircase by the band room. It's unsettling, really, how close she still feels to him after her abrupt reappearance, like all those nights spent avoiding eye contact while they poured their souls into their sound actually meant something.
He snorts into the last bite of his chicken patty and gathers his books - if he'd meant something to Maka, well, she would have shown him. Actions speak louder than words, right? The bell rings again and he trudges to his next class, idly wondering how long he should loiter after last period to be sure Maka isn't anywhere near the lockers.
He gets an answer after he spends an hour skulking in the band room pretending to fiddle with the piano. Once he's relatively sure most people who aren't involved with after-school sports have left, he heads to his locker to get his bag and go home.
A folded over post-it note flutters to the floor when he opens the locker, and he stoops to pick it up. There, unsigned but in an unmistakably precise hand are simply the words I'm sorry.
He crumples the note without a second thought and tosses it into the trash. It's far too late for apologies, and, as Wes is so keen to remind him each night-
Sorry isn't good enough.
/
And so begins his new routine.
Every morning there's a new post-it in his locker, and every morning he throws it away unread. The process repeats itself each afternoon once he's peered cautiously around the corner to make sure she hasn't taken to waiting for him, but so far, she seems to respect his unstated but pretty clearly demonstrated desire to be left the fuck alone. There's always a twinge of curiosity to see if she's written anything other than the I'm sorry that was on the first one, but he resists the urge to look by telling himself whatever she has written doesn't change the past.
This goes on for a week, and then another, and another, until he greets the third month of school with the same indifferent shrug with which he went into the first. When he gets to school and opens his locker, his hand automatically rises to catch the note that always falls out, except this time one doesn't. Squinting, he checks under his binders and even furtively nudges aside his bag to make sure he didn't cover it, but his locker looks exactly like it did last Friday after he discarded her afternoon post-it.
By all rights, he should be happy about this development. Ecstatic even, since dealing with the notes has required him to use energy he barely has - but here he is, rooting around his mess of a locker trying to find it. Even though he's never read them, they've become something to look forward to in the same begrudging way one looks forward to going grocery shopping or removing a splinter. He gives his locker one final once-over to make sure he didn't miss it in the unmitigated catastrophe of school supplies and loose paper before he heads off to class.
Maybe there will be one this afternoon.
He catches himself glancing at the clock every fifteen minutes until last period lets out and then, with little conscious thought, he heads to the locker bay on time for the first time since the school year started. Really, there's no reason for him to do so, especially since he doesn't care whether or not she's there, but when he turns the corner his heart leaps in his throat.
She's in front of his locker with another stickie note clutched in her hand, and with a small pang, Soul notices that it's shaking slightly. He watches her while she stares at his locker, unmoving, as the tide of students eager to leave cascades around her. Her shoulders rise and fall abruptly and she takes a quick step towards his locker, the arm holding the note rising to the thin slats by the number plaque.
But then she stops.
Her arm falls limp at her side, the note slips to the tips of her fingers as her grip relaxes, and she turns to the same garbage bin he's become so well acquainted with these last few months. She holds it up and looks at it for a few seconds before letting it drop down on top of the other trash. And then she's gone.
Soul releases the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, thoughts racing. Did she really care that much about those notes? He walks over to the trash where she'd placed the one she almost gave him today and gingerly takes it out.
It says I'm so, so sorry in that neat hand, and something unfurls inside him. Between this note and the way she moved like she was sleepwalking, he begins to wonder if maybe it'd be worth it to hear what she has to say. But it's hard, so hard, to look past the biting hurt of being all but abandoned by her, his supposed best friend, and left to pick up the pieces of his family's deaths alone.
He wavers there, in front of the garbage bin, unsure of what he actually wants versus what his pride tells him he deserves. Perhaps against his better judgement, he pockets the note before gathering his bag from his locker so he can head home and sleep off this bewildering day.
The note feels heavy in his pocket on the drive home, but also, inexplicably, warm.
/
There's no post-it in his locker the next morning either, though after what he saw the other afternoon, he's not really surprised. He'd considered going in at a regular time to catch her before classes, but he doesn't know what he'd say. Doesn't know why he even kept that last note, either, but there it is burning a hole in his pocket as he walks to first period, and he's gotta figure something out soon because he almost walked into the bathroom instead of the biology room and why does he even care about this? Stopping dead in his tracks, Soul takes a very careful, very measured breath and turns toward the science wing so that he can deal with classes and then figure out what to do about his conflicting feelings regarding Maka.
The day passes quickly enough, all things considered - he has a miniature heart attack every time he sees anyone with blond hair out of the corner of his eye, but that can't be helped, really - and then the final bell signals the end of the day and he's swimming through a mass of students to reach the lockers before she leaves.
He turns the corner and there she is, cramming a small library's worth of books into a backpack that might as well be a duffel bag given the size of it, hair spilling over her face so she can't see him as he approaches. All of the half-formed greetings and ice-breakers die in his throat when she glances up at him.
A kaleidoscope of emotion swirls too quickly in her eyes for him to make sense of anything, but then her face hardens into the cool, aloof mask he recognizes from the times she'd used it on her father or anyone else she didn't want to talk to.
"Hey." He doesn't really know what to say after the way he's snubbed her, so he hopes she'll be able to tolerate him long enough to come up with something better than 'sorry I was a jerk, I would actually like to be friends.'
"Hi." Her entire body is tense, and the cautious way she looks at him reminds him he needs to be careful with how he proceeds.
He takes a deep breath. "So, I know you've been trying to get in touch-"
"Yeah, forget about that. I'm sorry I bothered you." She shoves a final book into her backpack before shouldering it and striding towards him as if she'll breeze right through him, but he shoves a hand into his pocket and holds out the note she almost left him like a talisman.
Her eyes widen. "That's-" Glancing at him, she snatches it from his hand and flips it over a few times as if to make sure it's real before looking at him with a rawness he wasn't expecting. "You actually read it?"
The incredulity in her voice gouges him. "Yeah, I did. Look, I'm-What did you wanna talk about? Before."
She straightens herself and looks at him, jaw clenched. "I wanted to start over. I wanted to see if you were willing to be friends, but you made it pretty clear that you weren't, and that's fine, I get it, but just-don't come antagonize me, okay? Ignoring me was working out just fine." She starts to turn around, and without thinking, Soul reaches out and hooks his index finger around her pinky. The contact sends a jolt through his entire body, the way it feels when you're almost asleep and you feel like falling, and she turns her head sharply at him, eyes wide and mouth half-open.
"I wanna try." The words come without thinking, and the moment he says them the tangled buzzing in his mind quiets and is replaced by the kind of stillness he only experiences on those rare nights he doesn't have a nightmare.
Maka gives him a cautious look. "But why the sudden change of heart? You've been avoiding me since school started."
Soul puts his free hand on the back of his head, at a loss for words because he has the same question. "I never really gave you a chance to say anything," he says slowly, looking past her at the bright comic sans lettering on a nearby bulletin board. "I guess I wanna change that."
Maka glances down to their joined hands and then to the note he salvaged. "I really am sorry I wasn't here, you know," she says quietly, eyes dim and swirling with an intensity he doesn't understand. "And I really did try calling you after I heard about the accident, but you never picked up. I gave up after a couple weeks, thinking you wanted nothing to do with me." She laughs tiredly and unhooks her hand from his before taking a half step back. "How about we start over? Not all the way over, obviously, but back to when we could stand to be in the same room as each other."
Soul winces slightly at that but nods, shuffling his feet uncomfortably because he hadn't thought this far ahead - what does he say, how does he act now?
Luckily Maka is a step ahead, bridging the space between them with an outstretched hand and a smile that seems almost relieved. She doesn't step closer, though, nor try to grab his hand where it's hovering awkwardly in the same position she released it; instead she just waits for him to meet her in the middle. It's comforting, somehow.
Her grip is firm when he finally takes her hand, the roughness of her calluses sending small tingles up his arm and reminding him how dedicated she's always been. Something pokes him as she releases her grip and Soul glances at his hand to see her note crinkled into his palm.
"All right, I have to get going now, but I'll see you tomorrow." She flashes him a smile, full and genuine and filled with promise, before turning and walking towards the exit.
He watches the door slip shut behind her, bars of golden sunlight illuminating the dust that can never quite be kept under control, and then looks back at the note she returned to him. Tomorrow, huh? He pockets the note again and gathers his bag from his locker before following her out of the building, wondering why he hasn't noticed before how bright the needles on the pine trees are against the wide open sky.
/
"So, about you being my accompanist in the Death City Open."
Soul closes his locker, the small sound of the lock catching barely audible over the background chatter. Ever since they got back on speaking terms, Maka's been stubbornly nagging him to play with her in this upcoming competition and he has been just as stubbornly deaf to her requests.
"For the hundredth time, no," he mumbles, turning his back to her and walking away.
"But it makes so much sense!" She's walk-skipping to keep up with his long strides but still undeterred, her voice strong and even as she once again argues her case. "We've played together before. It wouldn't take so long to get back into practice since we know so much about how we each play."
Soul sighs. "Are you kidding me? That day in The Black Room was the first time I'd played in front of people since the accident. I don't even know how I play anymore, let alone you."
"Well, then that's why we need to practice. The sooner the better, too, because the competition is in January, and that's only two months away."
"I said I don't want to." It's hardly a whisper, just the barest hum of sound, but Maka stops talking and Soul feels years of repressed loneliness corrode his apathy like battery acid. "Look, I know you think you know how we'd play, but it's been so many years that we're pretty much strangers again."
Her jaw tightens and she straightens up, mouth open and eyes flashing, before she takes a deep breath and remains silent.
She shouldn't have anything to say, after all. The boy she knew and the almost-man he is now are the same person only in name, and it irks him that she presumes to know otherwise. What could she possibly understand about the stabbing guilt that's sewn to him like a shadow, the special agony of waking in the same bed he and his brother used to jump on during pillow fights or hide under during Maka's terrifying reign in hide and seek?
Does she know what it's like to live inside a tomb?
"Just drop it, all right?" Soul makes to move around her, but she reaches out to grab his hand.
"Wait." A small tremor runs through her hand like she pricked herself on a needle. "You're right. I'm sorry for being too pushy. I just thought that, well, since we both learned from Wes, we'd both know what it means to truly understand music."
As he opens his mouth to tell her no, music is nothing but a wound that hasn't healed properly, the glint of sunlight in her eyes reminds him of stage lights on a piano. Suddenly he's four and sitting on the piano bench for the first time, poking keys at random and laughing while the sounds fill him up. He remembers how gently Mother held his hands as she positioned them for his first chord, remembers the surge of happiness that galloped through him when he played his first song perfectly, the way Mother smiled so genuinely as his music echoed throughout the hall. Sure, it eventually twisted into something darker, less Evans-worthy, but the moment he'd hit the first key, he'd realized he had found something that could release the kaleidoscope of emotion swirling inside his soul.
"Music was like that for me. Was." He sighs, the thought of playing again sapping what little energy he has. "I'm not who I used to be."
She smiles, though she doesn't meet his gaze. "Yeah, I guess I'm not either."
There's a small silence between them while Soul tries to think of something to say through the heavy gauze that stands between him and his thoughts, and Maka keeps taking small breaths like she's about to speak but doesn't.
"Guess I'll see you later," he hazards after a moment, turning away slowly to head in approximately the right direction for his class. This is not before he catches her staring at his hands with something like regret, and he finds himself looking at them for the rest of the day.
What could she possibly see in them?
/
The remainder of his day is uneventful, and too soon he's opening the heavy oak door his mother had custom-made in England. Dropping his book bag on the floor, he trudges up the winding servant staircase next to the kitchen that lets out on his wing of the house, trailing his fingers along the little wrought-iron detailing that winds around the banister. Most days he can't stomach the usual route, the one that brings him past Wes's door and the small, white handkerchief on the floor beside it. He doesn't have time for ghosts, not today, so he avoids that wing entirely and walks down his musty hallway that's blessedly clear of any remnants of the past.
Returning to the quiet dark of his room is only a small comfort. His world has been nudged by Maka's return, tipped on its axis, and part of him is still reeling. It's almost like he's been thrust into a perverse alternate reality where he gets to enjoy Maka's company at the cost of Wes's life. Soul squirms internally, the relief that she didn't leave for good clashing with the acidic guilt that Wes will never get to see her smile reach her eyes again. Wes deserves to see it far more than the Evans leftovers.
Thinking of them together reminds him of the many hours Maka had spent here. They'd all been so close, playing together and talking and taking pictures-
Pictures. They'd taken so many, the three of them, enough that some are probably still lying around.
He throws off his school clothes and shrugs into an old shirt and sweatpants, kicking aside yellowing staff paper as he makes his way to his desk. Setting aside a pile of empty takeout containers, he rummages through a few drawers before carefully drawing out an old manilla folder graffitied with musical staffs, a violin bow, and various emoticon faces. Hesitant fingers run down its length before he musters the courage to open it up and take a look.
Faded polaroid photos are mixed in with bits of paper and small drawings, all curling with age. He picks up the first one, unable to stop the wistful smile it summons. It's a perfect tableau, an exquisite snapshot of their friendship. Maka is mid-lunge with a book in one hand and a feral snarl on her face, while Soul's mouth is open in a scream as he clutches her graffitied music book and a sharpie to his chest. That was the first and last time he listened to Blake's advice about how to "make the ladies happy."
Flipping through the other pictures, he's reminded of other small moments. There's the time he tried to bring Maka lunch in the practice room and tripped, spilling sandwiches and milk all over his mother's authentic oriental carpet and Maka's lap. And the day Maka insisted he help her practice putting makeup on by letting her put it on him first. He's still confused about why she was so grumpy after she'd finished; it's not his fault his eyelashes are so thick.
As he flips past another photo, a piece of paper falls from the pile and flutters to the ground. It's ratty and written in a narrow, angular hand Soul recognizes as his own. He almost drops it again once he reads through half of the notes scrawled across the page.
It's the song he wrote for her.
Or at least started to write for her. He's not exactly sure when it all began, whether it was something she'd said or done, but one day he'd begun to notice small things about her. Like the difference between her smile for his parents and her smile for Wes, or the way she'd hold her bow when she was happy or sad or angry. Each new observation had filled his heart with a curious, satisfying warmth, and soon he found himself treasuring each new discovery.
Writing music was the natural way for him to handle this feeling, since words were decidedly out of the question, and he'd needed something to distract himself from replaying her laughter over and over again in his mind. After a year or so of tinkering with it, Soul had gone to bed one night (after a jittery pep talk from himself) with the intention to play it for her after school.
The next day, Maka had asked to be Wes's music partner.
He crumples the page in his hands and throws it across the room where it almost immediately gets lost somewhere between a pile of old clothing and a molding pizza box. Who cares about the rhythmic tune she inspired in him anyway, or how often it'd be buzzing in the back of his mind while she practiced, somehow always the perfect accompaniment to whatever she was playing? That's over, done with, shoved into the same box with plans to finally let Wes teach him how to ski and the promise he made to his mother that he'd play at their thirtieth wedding anniversary.
The sun is still low on the horizon when he kicks off his dogeared Converse and falls into bed, counting the watermarks in the ceiling until the fatigue that's always tugging at his consciousness pulls him under.
/
Light, airy notes drift from his piano while he and Maka sit in the practice hall, the sun saturating everything with rich, golden light. His baby grand glimmers, dignified in its sultry tones, while Soul dances his hands across the keys. He's playing for her, he realizes, images of scrawled music notes flitting through his mind before her head on his shoulder banishes all else from his thoughts.
Stifling a yawn, she leans further into Soul until the heat of her arm against his becomes distracting, and he softens the song to something more tender, something closer to the sensation of wholeness that has crept so silently into the space between his ribs. Maka makes a small noise against him, so he shifts slightly to get a look at her. "What was that?" he murmurs, the unwrinkled expanse of her forehead a siren call to his lips.
Her eyes open. They're red.
A sea of shark teeth glitter in his vision as she unhinges her jaw, chin dipping to her chest with a grotesque crack. She leans back, mouth gaping, and Soul just manages to twist to the side so that she latches onto his shoulder instead of his jugular. Pain explodes through his body as she bites down hard and shakes him like a ragdoll, his blood splattering on the dissolving floor.
But this is what you wanted. Her voice echoes in his head, the room around them fading into nothingness while he struggles to breathe, struggles to speak. Now we can be together.
The pressure is suddenly gone from his neck, and he gets one deep breath before she's digging her hands into the bite wound, stretching and pulling it apart like she wants to peel the skin from his bones. Crooked smile twisting her face, she pulls him down to the ground and steps one foot into his exposed neck, then the other. Wes can't have me when I'm in you, right?
Soul claws at his throat, trying not to let her enter, but he's too late. His skin expands like bubblegum as she stretches it and slides inside. There's a beat of silence, a long exhale.
Scythe blades rupture the skin of his arms, tear his fingers to shreds while he screams and falls to the ground, body writhing as it goes through cycle after cycle of transformation. That's a good boy, Maka croons from inside him. Be the weapon that destroys the competition.
"I don't want to!" he yells, voice hoarse and eyes screwed shut.
But Soul, you already are.
He opens his eyes in time to see his arms transform once more, just as Wes walks up to him like nothing is wrong.
"Hey bro," Wes says. "How 'bout a hug before I go get that trophy?" He flings his hands wide, smile warm and inviting, while Soul's own bladed arms jerk up like they're attached to a puppeteer's strings. You've got scissors for arms! Maka laughs inside him.
Terror roils in his gut as he gurgles, "Don't-!"
He's always too late.
Cut clean in half from his embrace, Wes slides to the ground with a sick thump. Soul clutches his face with now human hands, howling to drown out Maka's mad giggles bouncing around his mind.
Told you.
Soul wakes with a gasp, drenched in sweat and swallowing hard to hold down the bile burning in his throat. Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth. He focuses on his breathing for a few minutes while he lets the terror of his nightmare recede like stormwater after a hurricane.
The red digits of his alarm clock inform him that it's 3:32 AM.
Quietly, he lies back down, settling in to wait for the sun to paint his room a muted gray.
/
Predictably, the rest of his day passes in a sleep-deprived haze, faces and sounds blurring into an incomprehensible mass of fuck off. It's only when he's staring blankly at the wall after his last class that he realizes the bell rang twenty minutes ago and he can go home. He gathers his books on autopilot and makes his way towards his locker, listening to the faint echoes of his footsteps in the empty hall.
Just as he passes another hallway, he hears the sharp sound of a violin from one of the rooms further down. A piercing melody pulls at the core of his being, ethereal and haunting, and he changes course to head towards the source of the music. There's something familiar about it, something in the bittersweet harmony and sweeping low notes that fills him with a special kind of longing.
He listens for only a few minutes before the music cuts off and he hears rapid footsteps approaching the door. There's no time for him to duck into another classroom, so he prepares a quick lie about having forgotten something in the room when a pair of narrowed green eyes greets him in the doorway.
Apparently, he hadn't been as quiet as he thought.
Maka blinks at him, relaxing slightly when she sees who it is. "Soul? What are you doing here?"
"I-" What is he doing here? People play music all the time after school for band or orchestra practice and he's never felt inclined to see who it was before. "I was just walking by," he finishes lamely, internally cringing at how weak that sounds but also baffled that he cares at all what she thinks of him.
She looks at him consideringly. "Well, since you're here, come in." Before he can protest or come up with something lame to get himself out of this unplanned human interaction, Maka has turned away and walked back to gather her violin and bow. "Might as well hear it the way it's meant to be heard." She gestures with a nod to one of the chairs in the room and Soul takes a seat, irritated that he's actually interested in what she might play. So much for not caring.
"What are you going to play?" he asks, more to get his own curiosity under control before it devolves into something like emotional investment than because he actually cares which dead composer he might hear.
Her smile doesn't reach her eyes when she turns back towards the music stands where her violin rests on a nearby chair. "Something original I've been working on. You wouldn't have heard it before." After a small breath, she closes her eyes and is perfectly still for two beats before beginning to play with an explosiveness that startles him.
Joyful, upbeat tones sing from Maka's violin, painting the room in the warm reds and oranges of a sunrise. It's like her sound seeps into his bones and settles there, fitting into the pattern of his soul as easily as her bow slides across the strings. Short, staccato bursts fill the room, splattering blues and greens along the walls of his heart as her fingers dance nimbly along the violin's neck. Her sound is both uplifting and powerful, a dragon on the wing, and he lets himself get swept away in the torrent.
She sparkles, he realizes belatedly, watching her body flow and sway with her bowing arm. Her music sparkles. Back when he used to play with Wes, his brother would always tell him about the moment passion collides with music, how it'd shimmer like sunlight passing through a fine mist. Soul had never understood that, never thought that music could be so colorful, yet here he is, feeling more than seeing the bright golds and electric greens she coaxes out of her violin. The hues whisper to him in a language he can't name but implicitly understands as they rush through his veins in a radiant, molten spectrum.
Her pace slows, less an energetic red or yellow and more a somber navy blue, as night falls in her song. Small bursts of double-time notes remind him of twinkling stars, and it's only when the burning in his chest forces him to cough that he realizes he hasn't breathed since she started. He's still trying to catch his breath when Maka drags her bow across the strings in a final, unsettling note, and, eyes still closed, exhales and settles heavily into the chair behind her. "What do you feel?"
He's tempted to say 'everything' because right now he's like a shaken snow globe, fragments of emotion swirling erratically as he grips his chair to get a handle on himself. "I don't know," he finally croaks, surprised by the lump in his throat. "The way you played-something about it reminded me of Wes."
"Ah, I see," she says, smiling again, but this time Soul sees something bitter in it. His heart leaps; is she sick of being compared to him too? "Is that a good thing?"
"Yeah. You-" he pauses, struggling to find the words. "You sound colorful," he blurts.
The clock ticks louder than it should on the wall behind him. Wind blows tree branches to scrape against the windowpanes. But mostly, it's the blood pounding in his ears that beats out the expanding seconds between his ridiculous outburst and any response from her. Nervous that he's once again made an ass of himself, he clears his throat to explain his unconventional answer when a large grin makes the corners of her eyes crinkle in a way that makes his heart stutter.
"What a relief. I was beginning to think my music had lost its spirit." She looks fondly at her violin for a moment before turning away to carefully put it back in its case, and her hand remains on it after she's closed the clasp like she doesn't want to let it go.
Soul doesn't know what to say, memories of sunny afternoons in the practice hall listening to her pull such effervescent sound from the violin at odds with her apparent insecurity in her music.
"You know, Wes always used to say that the mark of a true musician was when their music struck that place deep inside, the soul or the spirit or whatever it is that makes people sigh at sunsets and cry over art. He said once you do that to someone, embed your sound into the core of their being so they can't shake it, then you've changed them. From that point on, they walk around and live their lives with that sliver of you sewn into them, influencing, maybe, the clothes they buy or where they eat, and that affects other people in this giant cascading wave that started from just a few notes, and - don't you think that's kind of like living forever?"
"Forever?" Soul shakes his head and stands up, grabbing his bag from the floor. "You can't live forever and why would you want to in a world that doesn't give a fuck about anyone? Music isn't anything special - it's just noise in a certain order."
He steps towards the door, fully intending to leave, except then she says, "You felt it, though, didn't you? Musicians like us, we don't forget what it's like to move people."
Soul stops in the doorway, suddenly feeling, again, the weight of his loss. "I've never moved anyone with my music," he mutters before walking down the hallway towards the parking lot so he can go home and sleep for the rest of the day.
He's not sure whether the ache in his chest is because she gives him space, or because he doesn't want her to.