remember when i said there would be three parts? i lied. *finger pistols*the third part was 11k and i figured that was a bit much for one day. so here is part 1 of the final chapter...with the second part coming tomorrow.
"Well someone's looking moody today!"
Soul groans into the wooden post he's currently got his forehead pressed up against. "Fuck off, Patti."
"Ruuuude," she drawls. "Just trying to look out for my coworker.'
Soul pries an eye open and glares at her. "Thanks, but no thanks."
They're both in the back room, avoiding the crowd still in the pub under the pretense of getting more napkins (Soul) and sweeping the floor (Patti). Soul's head has been throbbing for the past half hour like there's someone in there using the inside of his skull as a gong. He's off work in about twenty minutes, and he's sort of trying to skulk back here until he can leave.
"You've been acting like someone took a shit in your food all evening," Patti says bluntly.
"What, so I've been puking all over everyone?" Soul scoffs. "That was a stupid analogy."
Patti prods him in the leg with the end of her broom. "Don't judge my ways of speaking, piano prick."
Soul laughs, a little unwillingly, and Patti grins.
"Which reminds me," she continues. "When are we going to get to hear some of your music? On the rare occasions that you bother talking to us, it's the only thing you talk about."
Apart from possibly Maka, who hadn't shown up at the dock last night, music is the last thing Soul wants to talk about. This morning he spent hours trying to piece together some of his soundscape for a song, but he doesn't have a proper set of drums to record any decent sounding percussion with. All he could do was track out his planned percussion section using electronic drums on his laptop, but it doesn't sound how it's supposed to, how he wants it to. And without that, nothing else seemed to sound right. It was like fighting with Maka had sapped all of the power out of the music, and he was left with disconnected ocean sounds and some lame recorded chords on a keyboard.
"Never," Soul says. "I'm going to become a bartender full-time."
Patti snorts. "You're not even a bartender here. You're like...an assistant bartender or something because Liz says you don't have the serving whatchamacallit license thing to make drinks."
"She let me make a gin and tonic when it was really busy once," Soul mutters. Being around Patti either has the effect of making him feel much older and more mature, or making him feel like a kid again. Today, it's clearly the latter.
"Gin and tonic," Patti says. "Real difficult. Are you gonna sign up to play something for tomorrow?"
"What's happening tomorrow?" Soul asks. There's a sinking feeling in his stomach that tells him he already knows.
"Everyone's pretty certain it'll be the storm," Patti says, her eyes flashing with excitement. "I mean, it rained yesterday afternoon and it was grey all today—just like every year. Storm will be tomorrow for sure. So there'll be a sort of open mic festival thing during it and there'll be stalls and food and—"
Soul shoves away from the post, a strange surge of anger swelling up in him.
"Why is everyone in this weird island obsessed with this storm?" Soul grits out. "Like, storms are not nice things! You could die if you're outside in a storm! Get like...pneumonia! Or get electrocuted! Why the fuck is a storm a cause for celebration?"
"Die?" Patti laughs. "Don't be stupid." Her eyes are clear now, bright and serious. "The island is protected."
Soul stares at her. "Protected?"
"Jesus fucking Christ!" Liz comes hurtling around the corner, looking about ready to murder someone. "It does not take that long to get napkins! Some 40 year old tourist man just decided he wanted to get a little too friendly with his waitress Jackie and now Kim is going to be arrested for murder if one of you doesn't get out there and pull her off him!"
Patti's entire face lights up with a vicious sort of excitement.
"I'm on it!" she growls with satisfaction. She charges out of back room with the broom held like a javelin. Soul closes his eyes and slumps back against the post.
Liz sighs loudly, making no move to follow her sister. "This is why coworkers should not be allowed to date."
"I'm pretty certain Kim would still beat up creepy old men even if she wasn't dating the person they were being creepy towards," Soul says.
"I know," Liz replies, clearly frustrated. "It's just—we throw them out of the pub for sure, but we don't knock their teeth out first! Even if they deserve it! I mean, I don't wanna have to try and get blood stains out of the wood floors! They're stained enough as it is!"
"Sorry," Soul says.
"Shut up, it's not your fault," she says. "Assholes will be assholes."
"Did Kim really knock out his teeth?"
Liz cracks a tiny smile. "Not sure, but I think she broke one of his fingers."
"Sounds good to me."
Liz rubs a hand over her face slowly, starting to drift back towards the front of the pub. Soul grabs a stack of napkins and follows her.
"God, I'm so happy we're closed tomorrow," she says.
"We are?" Soul asks. "I thought I had an evening shift."
"You did, but that was before it became clear the storm was tomorrow. Everything closes on storm day," Liz explains.
Soul almost throws the napkins on the ground. Nothing about this "storm" makes any sense to him and the very idea of it is starting to piss him off and terrify him at the same time. Everyone treats it like it's ordinary, like it's something awesome even, except for Maka and Black*Star, who hadn't wanted to talk about it at all. What do they know that no one else does?
Liz checks her watch. "You might as well just head out," she says. "You've only got like five more minutes left, and you look kind of terrible, no offence. Just bring the napkins out and you're good to go."
"Thank you," Soul says, with great feeling. "I am done with this day."
"I know what you mean."
Patti is buffing the bar when they come back out to the front, looking monumentally pleased with herself. Kim and Jackie are huddled in a corner, talking in quiet voices, and the crowd has mostly died down (probably chased away by Kim nearly eviscerating someone). It's easily manageable for the four girls left, and Soul doesn't feel bad about restocking the napkins and punching out as fast as he can.
The sky above is a flat black when he gets outside, all of the stars hidden by clouds. At the end of the street he thinks he sees Black*Star, and for a split second he thinks about calling out, asking him...something. But then the figure is gone, ducking in between two houses. Soul continues on to his cottage.
The air is summer warm, but he still feels cold, even once he gets inside. He doesn't bother turning on the lights—it's midnight and he's going to go to bed soon. He peels his clothing off in the darkness and dumps them in a pile on one of his chairs, before groping for the comforter off of his bed and wrapping it around his shivering shoulders. He plunks himself down in the other chair and pulls his laptop to him, starting it up.
When he first decided to come here to this island, it had been in the middle of an argument with his parents about dropping out and what he could possibly do now with his worthless life. Soul had screamed it out—not "Shibusen", because he didn't even remember the name of the island his classmate had told him about—screamed that he knew exactly where he was going and that it would be exactly the right place. He'd looked up only enough about the island to find a place to rent and figure out how to get there. He'd never looked at why people come here, what this island's claims to fame are. Sitting now in front of his computer, he thinks it's finally time for him to figure that out.
He types "Shibusen Island storms" into google and waits. The top three results are a video entitled "sick lightning at shibusen!", the wikipedia article for the island, and then finally a link to a specific page of the island's tourism site. Soul stares, mouse hovering over the third link: it's called "Shibusen Storms: The Legend of the Water Spirits".
Something squirms sickly in his gut and he clicks on it. It's just starting to load when there's a crack of sound at his door. He jumps and slams the laptop shut, heart racing.
"Soul?"
He surges up out of his chair, almost jamming his thigh into the edge of the table, and hobbles to the door to pull it open. On his porch is Maka, barefoot and bare-shouldered, wrapped in the blanket he'd hung on the railing this morning to dry after it was caught in the rain. She's shivering and not quite looking at him.
"Maka?" he says slowly. "What are you—what—"
"Can I come in?" she says quietly. "I just—I just need—"
"Yes, yeah, sure," Soul stammers, moving aside so she can drift in. He closes the door behind her and fumbles for the light switch; the whole cottage is illuminated with a sputter of dirty light, the whole mess and clutter and tininess of it all. She stands in the centre of the room, taking it all in, and he feels stupid and desperate and worried.
"Do you want to borrow some of my clothes?"
"No," she says. "Unless you want your blanket back. Sorry, I just don't have any of my own clothes stashed near your house and I needed something—" She takes a deep, shuddering breath. "Had a fight with my dad. Thought of seeing you. I don't know. It was dumb."
"It wasn't, it wasn't, it's—it's cool," Soul says. "Do you wanna talk about it?"
She shakes her head. "Can you play me something?"
"I—yeah," Soul says. "Just—here, take this."
He swings the comforter off of his shoulders and hands it to her before grabbing his sweater off the chair and pulling it back on. He's very aware of the pull of his body, of the flashes of bare skin he's presenting to her before he gets covered. God, he's in his boxers, skinny legs galore. He's probably the most uncool thing she's ever seen.
Maka sits down on his bed and draws her legs up, snuggling into the comforter until only her head is poking out. She looks so different than anytime he's seen her before—sallow and tense where she's usually bright and confident. Soul pulls his empty chair away from his laptop and sets it down so he's facing Maka when he sits, pulling his guitar into his hands.
"Play the song you were writing when I met you," Maka says. "The one you said was you."
He does what he's told.
His fingers are cold and wooden on the strings at first, but Maka sits back and listens anyway. The world outside the windows is pitch black, broken up only by the reflections of the inside of the cottage, and it feels like there's nothing else but the two of them and these four walls. He plays the song that had once been about him and now is about her too. He plays and plays, looping back into the beginning of the song when it gets close to the end, and watches as Maka's expression loosens, her entire body sinking into the comforter.
He stops when her eyes slip shut, and she pries one open to fix him with an odd, intent look.
"I thought you were falling asleep," he whispers.
"I am," she murmurs. "Can I? Just for a little bit?"
"Sleep?"
"Yeah."
"Sure."
She closes her eye again and squirms around on his bed until she's lying down properly on her side, the comforter spread out over the bed the way it's supposed to be. Soul puts down his guitar as quietly as possible and sits there like an idiot for a moment. He darts a glance at his laptop, sitting safe and closed on the table.
"Come here," Maka says. "Stop brooding over there like a loser and just sleep."
Soul stares at her; it's a good thing she's facing the wall because he's pretty sure the look on his face is really stupid.
"I'm sorry about the other day," he blurts.
"Yeah, you should be," she says, her voice muffled. "Jerk." A pause. "Now get over here. My back is cold."
Soul stands up, hovering for a moment between the chair and the bed. His head is full of cotton wool and Maka is an oblong lump under his covers. He pulls off his sweater again and lets it fall to the ground before carefully lifting the comforter and sliding onto the bed. It's not made for two people to fit in it, and as soon as he gets in he's bumping up against her. Feeling huge and clumsy, he lies down on his side, his back pressed to hers, knees pointing off the edge of the bed, both of them curled up in mirror images of each other.
"You know," he says quietly, when they've been silent long enough that he's not sure if she is still awake. "I came here because of a fight with my dad."
It takes a second, but her voice is clear when it comes out of the darkness. "What do you mean?"
"I'd fucked up," Soul says. "I felt weird and out of place at the fancy music college the whole family had gone to for like...three generations, so I dropped out. Brought shame to the family, apparently. So I basically decided to move here just so I could tell him I did have a plan and that he could stuff it."
Maka laughs, a small vibration against his back. "So it's a fluke you're here now?"
"I don't think so," Soul doesn't know how to say more than that, how to explain how much he needs this island to be where he's meant to be.
They're quiet for a long moment, the rhythm of breathing pushing them together and apart by inches, ribcages expanding into each other's space. Maka shifts and the rough grain of the blanket from outside that she's still wearing digs into Soul's skin.
"A lot of the time," Maka says softly. "I wonder if I hate my dad." A shaky breath. "I know I don't, but I wonder anyway."
Soul can tell it took a lot out of her to say it, and he waits for a moment before asking, "What did you fight about?"
"It doesn't matter," she says. "Similar things to you, I guess, though a little reversed. Important dad talking about duty, but with me it's—he doesn't want to let me do things I know I can do."
"Trying to control you by limiting you instead of forcing you to do things."
"Yeah."
"That sucks."
"It just makes me mad when he acts like that because—because when I was a kid he was always cheating on my mum and sleeping around and that's why she left him and us, and now he acts like he's got the right to have so much input on my life—" She exhales sharply. "It's just frustrating."
"That...that definitely sucks," Soul says pathetically.
He doesn't know what else to say, but she doesn't seem to be expecting anything else. She makes a humming noise in her throat and then suddenly she's turning, curling up behind him with her forehead at the nape of his neck and the backs of her wrists pressing warm against his spine. His whole body goes stiff for a long, tense second, and then he's melting, unable to stop it, relaxing into the two tiny points of contact between them.
"Thank you for playing for me," Maka whispers.
"I'll always play for you," Soul says, feeling crazily reckless and honest just lying here beside her. "Whenever you ask."
There's a pause, strangely long.
"I'll remember that," she says.
He's not sure when they fall asleep after that or how long they sleep for; all he knows is that he opens his eyes an unspecified, hazy amount of time later, feeling an absence on the bed, and looks up to see Maka silhouetted in front of his window, gazing out at the ocean.
"Maka?" he murmurs.
She glances back at him over her shoulder, her face in shadow.
"I didn't mean to wake you," she says.
"S'okay," Soul replies sleepily. "What are you doing?"
"We should go for a swim," Maka says, looking back out the window.
"Now?"
"Yeah."
"But it's—won't it be cold?"
"No. Around here the water stays warm through the night in the summer."
She turns around fully, and he still can't see her face, but somehow he's sure he's looking right into her eyes.
"Come on," she says.
It's darker outside than Soul would've thought possible, somehow blacker than when they had gone to sleep. They stumble down to the edge of the water, Soul in his boxers and Maka with the blanket around her like a tube dress. Everything is narrowed down to touch and sound: the grit of the sand against his bare feet, the shush of the waves pulling at the edge of the beach. Maka holds his hand as they wade in next to the dock, the water lapping at their legs. She was right: it's warm. Soul has goosebumps anyway.
Maka stops walking when the water gets just past her knees, slipping her hand out of Soul's. She bunches her fists in the blanket, holding the hem up so it doesn't get wet. She hesitates like that for a moment and then shucks it off completely in one shadowy sweep of material, tossing it onto the dock. Soul is paralyzed, eyes stuck to her face. Maka meets his gaze for one heart-stopping second, and then dives straight into the water.
She pops out with a splash about twenty feet away, a dark smudge on the water.
"Are you coming in?" she asks.
"Do I have to?" Soul says. He's partially joking—because god, he wants to get to where she is—but partially not. It feels like they're maybe on the edge of something, but he doesn't know what, and doesn't even know what he did right or wrong or just...did...to get himself here. He doesn't know anything.
"You've been watching me swim around for weeks," Maka says. "And I've never seen you give it a try. Are you coming?"
"I—"
"Or maybe you're too scared," Maka says.
She's only teasing—she has no idea how close to the truth it is. There's a white-hot rush through Soul's tight chest and he hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his boxers.
"Fuck that," he calls, and peels them off, one leg at a time. His hands keep fumbling, and he almost falls over at one point, but she doesn't laugh, and he feels better than he thought he would once he's naked. He doesn't feel like he's going to have a heart attack, at least, even though she's definitely looking in his direction, and it's definitely not dark enough that she can't see anything at all.
He tosses his boxers onto Maka's blanket and sinks into the water, half paddling, half-walking up to Maka. The ground slips away from his feet as he goes, and by the time he's a metre away from her he's treading water, sending ripples out to bump up against her collarbones. His eyes have adjusted, and he can see her face now properly, can meet her gaze.
"So you can swim," she says.
"Obviously," Soul counters, shaky and nervous. "Why would I move to an island if I couldn't swim?"
"I don't know," Maka says. "Lots of people do crazy things."
"Says the water spirit."
"Hey!" She sends a wave of water up to splash his face without even moving her arms; Soul splutters and almost slips underwater. "Water spirits aren't a crazy thing around here. No type of spirit is."
"Wait," Soul says. "There are other types of spirits?"
She shrugs. "Come on, let's race."
She vanishes under the surface, as fast as if she was sucked down, and Soul spins in a clumsy circle, waiting for her to appear somewhere.
"Race to where?" he calls. "Cheater!"
There's a touch at his waist, cool fingers pressing into the dip of it, and he almost screams, whirling around. Maka pops up right in front of him, barely a foot away, wet and grinning. He can feel one of her knees brushing against the front of his with every other kick and it's so distracting that he's distantly worried he'll forget to swim and will start drowning instead.
"Maka Albarn does not cheat," she says primly. "And it's a touch race. You chase me."
She's gone again, shoving off with a hand on the centre of his chest.
"You want to play tag?" Soul says. This time there's no vocal answer, just a stream of bubbles churning up out of the water off to his far left and popping one by one. Soul swallows a laugh and takes a deep breath; if he's "it", he's going after her.
Diving into the water fully is like being plunged into black ink—he's completely blind, arms and legs working together to push him in the direction he was facing before he went under. He's about to kick up to surface again and try to get his bearings when he sees a flash of hazy pale feet just in front of him and reaches out. He grabs her ankle and hears, clear as a bell: "Sucker!" And then she's kicking out of his grip and the pressure in his lungs is forcing him to the surface.
"I still caught you!" he yells, as soon as he sucks in some air. She bursts out of the water a couple feet away, still laughing.
"Yeah, but I got away," she says.
"It's tag, not kidnapping," Soul argues. "Can you—can you speak underwater?"
"Of course I can," she replies. "I live underwater, idiot."
"Do it again," he says, ducking back under the surface. He keeps his eyes closed this time, floating in the same spot until he hears Maka's voice somewhere off behind his right shoulder. It sounds somehow different than it does in the air, smoother, like the water evens out all the rough patches.
"Over here!" she says.
He turns and swims clumsily towards the sound of her voice.
"Getting close," she sing-songs. "Almost...almost there."
Just when he's sure he's about to reach her, fingers stretched and searching, there's a swell of water pushing him back and up, making him burst, spluttering, into the air. He sinks back underwater for a second before he can get his legs under him properly to tread water, and then he's shaking his hair out of his face and yelling, "Unfair!"
"Tag doesn't have rules," she says, shooting up beside him. "At least, it doesn't with water spirits."
"Well, maybe go easy on the human here!" Soul squawks indignantly.
She swims a little closer, and Soul swallows, thinking to himself that it's a lot easier to ignore the whole "naked" thing when she's not right there, all of her wet skin less than a metre away. He wishes distantly that there was some way for him to cover his dick while still treading water—although it doesn't really matter, since she probably saw it when he took off his boxers. God, that's not what he needs to be thinking right now.
"What's it like being human?" she asks, absentmindedly swimming around him. "Like, does it feel weird to be in the water? I know I've got loads of human friends, but I don't think I've ever really asked that."
"No," says Soul. "Just...different than being on land. Takes more effort because we have to save our breath if we want to be underwater, and we have to be constantly moving to stay afloat. You're lucky—it's not like that with you being dryside. You were fine the other day."
"We can't be dryside permanently though," Maka says. "We won't like...dry out or something, but we sort of wilt away if we don't spend at least half of our time in the water."
"What, so you could live in the city but have to sleep in a full bathtub or something?"
"We need ocean or lake water, so no."
"So you could never leave the ocean for good if you wanted to?" Soul asks. "Doesn't that suck?"
"Are you kidding?" she laughs. "There's so much fucking cool shit in the ocean that I'm not even allowed to tell you guys about. There's stuff you've never seen because the water pressure would kill you if you tried to get down there. There's stuff that's so classified that it'll take me years to get clearance to learn about it or go see it."
"Clearance?"
"There's bureaucracies underwater too. But I'm going to get that clearance one day and help discover and fight new sea creatures and spirits."
"You're going to fight them?" Soul laughs. "I mean, I have no doubt that you could beat them, but why? Is that one of your mission statements or whatever?"
"When you get really deep in the ocean," Maka whispers, widening her eyes for effect. "Everything wants to kill you."
"So if we got deep enough you might want to kill me too?"
"Nah, you'd already be dead," she answers. "Water pressure. Human skull. Ka-boom."
"Or," he says, stifling a yawn. "I might be the one gunning to kill you."
"Good luck with that," she laughs.
The late hour is starting to catch up with him and he's getting tired. He's sinking lower in the water, his feet forgetting to kick; they want to drift down, want to search for a surface to rest upon. The water is pulling at him—it gets as far as his chin before Maka's hands are wet and warm on his waist, supporting him.
"Don't go drowning on me," she says softly.
"Sorry," he says, blinking at her.
"Time's up, probably," she says. "You've got to go to sleep and I need to get back. I really shouldn't have stayed away this long, I've got...preparations and stuff."
"Oh," says Soul. He has the distant feeling that there was a chance for him to do or say something and he's completely missed it. She's right in front of him, and they're both bare, but he's fading fast, and he's lost what might have been in his mind ten minutes ago.
"Thanks for swimming with me," she says. "For all of this. It's funny, but you—you remind me why I do this, why—why protecting the island is important." He has no idea what to say to that, but she doesn't seem to need an answer, because she rushes to speak again. "I need to get back."
"Will I see you tomorrow?" Soul asks.
She takes her hands off his waist, and his skin misses her touch as soon as it's gone. "No. But...maybe after that." She smiles at him, small but sincere. "This is just me needing to go home. I'm not saying goodbye."
She hesitates, and for a split second, staring at her so close, Soul is convinced that she's going to kiss him, or he's going to lose it and kiss her. But all she does is bring her hand softly down in a little karate chop on his head, just a tap of contact.
"You should sleep in," she says. And then she's disappearing into the water.
Soul stays floating there for a moment longer, just in case it's another game and she's not gone yet, but when the water stays as still as glass he turns back to the shore and swims until he can touch the bottom and walk again. He drags himself up the sand and into the house before he remembers the blanket and boxers on the dock. He thinks about going back for them, then dismisses it; he's too tired, and if they fall into the sea, well, the sea can take them just like it took his shoes.
There's a distant memory in the back of his head, something about laptops and lightning and fear that was there before Maka turned up, but he figures whatever it is, he can deal with it in the morning. He faceplants on his bed and lets sleep swallow him up like the mouth of a frightened whale.
and tomorrow comes the storm
