Alright alright alright alright
So my husband got promoted and we're moving to Portland, Oregon, which is about three thousand miles away, so things have kind of gotten hectic what with having to prep the house for sale and all that, which kind of explains the delay. The rest is because I'm a derp.
Please direct comments/questions/hate mail to me here or on tumblr, and enjoy!
Soul took his time with his dinner, refusing to hurry just because his brother, Spirit, and probably soon enough Kid himself were waiting on him. If he was about to bind himself to the Scourge to avoid being resurrected as a lich by the son of a death god, he was damn well going to take his time with his food. It was delicious, only slightly ruined by the fact that Wes hadn't had affection in mind when he procured it. Only slightly ruined by the fact that no matter what he did he'd lost to Kid at last.
Thank all the myriad shadows for Spirit and his fool sentimentality, he supposed.
His shoulder still hurt, but not as much as it had before his little outburst, so Soul didn't bother binding it back into place once he was finished with his meal. He did take a few minutes to put on a pair of decent breeches, tug on his less-abused pair of boots, and find a shirt that didn't have too many obvious mends in it. Might as well look decent marching to his fate.
Spirit was less than amused, first at the wait and then at Soul's insistence that he be allowed a bath first. To his credit, the man seemed well aware of Soul's less than enviable position, and managed to swallow his disdain for the younger Weapon long enough to walk him over to the officers' baths with a silent jerk of his head to indicate that Soul should follow him. Not easy, given the length of Spirit's legs, but Soul managed and was well rewarded when Spirit showed him into a private room equipped with a massive tub and what Soul assumed was a full complement of bathroom luxuries, considering that he didn't know what half of the bottles even were. Somehow Spirit managed not to laugh at him while he was gawking at what had to be everyday items for the Death Scythe, things like soft towels and soap that wouldn't take off skin along with dirt. Instead he gave Soul a withering look, rolled his eyes, pulled the lever by the tub that would funnel hot water into it, and settled himself into an easy slouch against the doorframe.
"So this bond," Soul said, watching water fill the tub with something like disgruntled wonder. "Is it just - some kind of link that lets us share power?"
"It was for me," Spirit said, watching him as though considering whether killing him might be a better choice after all. "I'd imagine it's dependent on how much control you have and how well you work together. It's not exactly something we've had much opportunity to study, and I'm fairly certain no one has tried to force it before."
"So now I get to be an experiment," Soul muttered, grumbling under his breath at having to undo his buttons all over again. There was hot water, though; it was all going to be worth it.
Spirit gave him an unamused look before turning his eyes deliberately elsewhere as Soul undressed. "Better an experiment than dead, I'd think."
Soul allowed himself a surly grunt in response, then distracted himself with digging through the assorted toiletries for a bar of soap that didn't smell ridiculous before climbing into the tub. That necessitated a few minutes spent wallowing in blissful silence as the heat sank into all his sore muscles, and by the time he'd gotten his hair wet through he'd come up with at least a somewhat coherent way to phrase his next question.
"So you're actually not concerned that your precious daughter might pick up critical information from me and report to Medusa with it?" he asked once he was settled in the almost-scalding water, scrubbing grime and leftover blood off his chest and belly where the Scourge's ravaged leg had rested while he'd carried her.
"No," Spirit snapped from the doorway, and gave him a sidelong look like daggers.
"And you actually think I can control her?" That was the real kicker, he thought; that Spirit could disdain him so and yet believe he could contain and bend the Scourge's will to his wishes.
"You can keep her alive while keeping her from becoming powerful enough to pose a threat," Spirit said, jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth. "Control her? Please. She's of better stock than that."
Soul huffed a bit while he scrubbed his face clean. "Which does bring us back around to the matter of her breeding, since we're sharing secrets," he said, turning his attention to the blood under his nails rather than look directly at the Death Scythe. "Who was her mother, and why aren't you the one trying to serve as a power source for her?"
"Not your concern," Spirit said, power crackling in the air but not given physical form, not yet.
Soul was silent for a few minutes while he scrubbed his hair clean, more than motivated to take advantage of quality soaps, and considered a new angle of attack that hopefully wouldn't end with him sliced to pieces. He considered, also, that one of the highest-ranked soldiers his people had might still be intimately tied to one of their most powerful enemies, and wondered just what that might mean.
"You're also not concerned with someone of my breeding having access to whatever additional strength that this kind of bond will give me?"
Spirit's hand rose to his neck seemingly of its own volition, pressing into the forming bruises Soul had left. "Not particularly," he said, mouth in an unhappy line and eyes very cold, everything about him giving the lie to his nonchalant words. "Azusa, Marie, and I should be more than able to contain you if it comes to that."
"You realize that Azusa will kill me," Soul said, skin prickling at the thought of the other Death Scythe, whose ruthlessness was the only thing about her more notorious than her beauty. "Which will, I presume, not have desirable consequences where the Scourge is concerned."
Spirit gave him a flat look. "If it comes to that, I can't say that any outcome could be considered desirable," he said, arms crossed and leaning against the door. "Don't let it come to that."
"No one is as invested in my maintaining sanity as I am," Soul said, washing soap from his hair and reaching for a towel, at which Spirit averted his eyes to the floor.
"Are you finally ready?" he asked after a minute, once Soul had set the cloth aside and begun getting dressed.
"Can one truly be ready for this kind of thing?" Soul asked, fumbling a bit with his buttons when his shoulder refused to let him hold his hand as steady as he wanted.
He didn't look up, but he could feel Spirit's eyes on him again. "If you always waited until you were ready, you'd never do anything worth doing," the older Weapon said, and Soul looked up then, red eyes blinking in surprise. Spirit only gave him another one of those odd, bitter smiles. "Hurry up."
"Ah," Soul said, settling his shirt across his shoulders, voice dropped into the bass rumble he used when he was too distracted to speak clearly, to project, to enunciate. "Yeah. Lead on, Death Scythe."
Spirit nodded, turned, opened the door; paused, and turned his head just enough to give Soul a very green profile stare. "Lead on?"
Soul sighed, squared his shoulders, and raised his chin enough to meet Spirit's eyes. "Escort me to my fate," he said, pressing his tongue against the back of his teeth when he paused. "Accompany me to the breach; my brother certainly won't bother. We're allies now whether you like it or not, because I know your secret and you need me to save the - your daughter."
"You need me in order to avoid Kid enslaving you for the remainder of eternity," Spirit said, eyes narrowing as a fine tension began in his shoulders that bespoke violence.
"I'm not arguing with you," Soul said, and maybe he sounded a bit more desperate than he intended. "I'm just - come with me, Spirit. This is the end for me, you know that. Either Kid gets me or I bind myself to the Scourge and Kid might still get me. If he doesn't, then what? You'll have to excuse me when I say that running away with your daughter is hardly an appealing prospect. I don't want to go down there alone again, especially not with Wes waiting for me."
"As if I'd leave you alone with her," Spirit said, looking away. "Let's go."
Tacit thanks, Soul supposed, for his willingness to at least try, even if it was a dead-end situation and Spirit's claim of having a daughter was - laughable. Soul had to believe that fact, though, insane as it seemed, because Spirit wouldn't claim it if it weren't true unless he'd developed suicidal tendencies; that kind of transgression was severe enough that Kid might investigate it even if Soul were the one tipping him off. Ratting Spirit out wouldn't save him, though, and Soul knew it all too well; as Spirit had pointed out, the more heroic acts he accumulated, the more likely it was that Kid would insist on 'rewarding' him with immortality that amounted to enslavement. It would also conveniently ensure the termination of the last line of direct descendants from the traitor Ragnarock, though there were still more than enough cousins to warrant watching. They didn't carry a history of insanity, though, and Soul assumed that Kid had to be getting impatient with only one lone son left to continue the direct line now that Wes had given himself to Lord Death.
He followed Spirit down into the dungeons without further conversation, hands stuffed deep in his pockets and grinding his teeth together as though hoping that wearing the points off might change his circumstances.
Nothing changed, though. Wes was still sitting there when they finally made their way down through the necropolis, eyes the color of old blood coming to rest on first Spirit and then Soul with a too-knowing weight. He didn't comment, didn't even move as they passed aside from his eyes, which tracked them all the way to the corridor and its line of cell doors.
Spirit stopped of a sudden halfway there, and Soul nearly tripped over himself doing the same, one hand catching the wall's rough stone as he shot the man an incredulous look.
"You go on ahead," Spirit said, arms crossed, doing his best to appear unconcerned. "She isn't interested in talking to me any more, I think. If you're to be linked, you could at least try to manage one normal conversation first." A pause, then, in which Spirit's eyes flicked from Soul to the walls and back again, thoughtful. "It's all I can give you, unfortunately. Would that you could know each other better before entering into this kind of partnership."
"Partnership," Soul repeated, and tried to reconcile the notion with his current situation. "Maybe you have that, Death Scythe, even after all these years. We'll have at best a forced truce based on the truth that the enemy of our enemy can be our friend."
"It'll keep you both alive," Spirit said, "and that's all we can ask for, don't you think?"
The muscles in Soul's jaw might have ached, considering how much time he'd spent making faces that were an unfortunate combination of regret, bitterness, and forced acquiescence, but he was too accustomed to it to notice. He gave Spirit a bleak look and turned on his heel, walked back to the cell where he'd left the man's daughter without the Death Scythe taking a single step after him.
The Scourge watched him approach, green eyes tracking him from her position on the cell's cot, back pressed firmly against the stone wall and mouth in a grim line.
"I remember you," she said when he came close. "The only Weapon I've ever met twice, and the one who put these holes in my leg. Shouldn't you be feasting with your demented high priest, you who brought the Scourge low?"
"If I'd known what my reward would be, I wouldn't have gone near you," Soul said, settling onto the stone bench that faced the cell. "Having Lord Death and his son own me doesn't particularly appeal. I kind of enjoy making my own choices."
"Is that why you've let the Death Scythe bully you into talking to me?" she asked, head tilted to one side in a kind of cruel inquisition. "You don't have the look of a man with the luxury of deciding his own fate."
He watched her for a moment, decided that she was not lovely when she was awake because her eyes were too cold, the line of her mouth too hard, the line of her body too - too much like Spirit's, he realized, taut with that same perpetual almost-violence, even exhausted and dying as she was. In light of their situation, Soul managed - just barely - not to lash out at the contempt in her voice, smothering his prickling anger with some difficulty.
"I," he began, then paused, and took a deep breath. "We," he started again, "have been given a choice, sort of. I thought I'd try to explain our options, even though it's not really much of a choice so much as a lesser evil."
"If the lesser evil leaves me alive and not enslaved, I'll take it, regardless," she said, slim fingers tangling together a bit in her lap, a kind of odd gesture that Soul supposed came of not having her hands free to do anything else. "You speak as though you and I are in this together, which doesn't make sense," she continued, tone unnaturally calm given that the way she watching him made Soul want to put a blade through her out of self-defense. "Why is that? Who are you, O Weapon lucky enough to catch me off guard? Why are your people not rewarding you?"
He found that all he could do was stare at her for that, confused red eyes clashing against her cool green; he'd never really had to introduce himself to anyone before. He'd always been Soul Eater, bearer of cursed blood, and everyone knew him because everyone knew about Ragnarock, even hundreds of years later. They'd known who he was before he did, really, had had him neatly labeled and filed away before he was old enough to even think of contradicting them. Who was he? What was there to say, really, to the enemy - how to even explain, and he had to explain, because if they were to be linked she had to know, would find out one way or another, he assumed.
The Scourge sighed, through waiting for a response well before he came up with anything to say. "Your name, perhaps?" she asked again, and didn't need to roll her eyes to convey the sentiment. "I'm Maka."
"I'm not certain I believed that Medusa bothered to name all of you," Soul said before he could rethink it, and the look Maka gave him probably could have skinned him alive if she'd been anything other than severely weakened.
"I'm Soul," he said in a rush, happy that there were bars between them and that his voice didn't crack because this woman, this powerless, dying, chained woman, was managing to be just as terrifying as Kid himself and that was - unsettling. "Soul Eater."
"That is not a name," she said, chin rising a bit, interested and imperious. At least some of the lethality had left her stare, forgotten in the face of what Soul supposed was her version of curiosity. "I call Death Scythe what I do because that is what he is to me. My brother took the name Black Star of his own volition. Your kind call me Scourge. These are names that have been chosen or earned. You spit that name out as though it were a brand. I thought your kind ate souls, Weapon."
"Your father does," Soul snapped, pleased to see her flinch just slightly at the word. "Lord Death and his son consume most of them, and let a few of their favorites beg for scraps. Not me. I'm just the last living son of an insane heretic who hasn't had the good taste to die yet."
"That man said he was your brother," came the unruffled response, cutting him off before he could get carried away.
"Yes," Soul said, crossing his arms with a scowl, the stone wall biting into his shoulders when he slumped back against it. "I didn't say there were no other sons of Ragnarock, just that I was the last living. Are you somehow not aware of how Kid rewards his most loyal servants?"
"I hear many things concerning your death god and his supposed son," Maka said, still so at ease where she was sitting on her cot that it was starting to feel insulting, undercurrent of implied violence or no. "Telling tales of our abominable enemy is a hobby I leave to my lesser brethren. I stick to facts and experience, and I haven't yet encountered one of your kind that stood a chance against me in a fair fight. That doesn't exactly give me reason to believe that your high priest can raise the dead as omnipotent thralls or whatever it is you call them."
Arrogant, and here he'd been concerned about giving her some warning as to the situation they were being thrown into. "Haven't you fought the Thompson sisters?"
That got a snort, and a flash of dismissive green eyes. "They are not my kind," she said, shoulders shifting in an abortive attempt to wave one hand. "I've heard the tales, but they are not kin to me, nor to you. I know that much."
"They were," Soul said, and was rewarded with another stare that made his skin crawl, made him want to look over his shoulder for a lurking threat that couldn't be there because he was sitting against a wall - this was stupid. "Just raising the dead is a parlor trick. What Kid does is well beyond that."
"So you say," she said, and shrugged again. "This isn't what you came here to talk about. What is this situation we find ourselves in, and why are you involved, heretic's son?"
"Ragnarock's madness is contagious," Soul said, the words bitter on his tongue. "All of his children fall prey to it in the end. Lord Death didn't kill everyone related to Ragnarock when he imprisoned him because my family was powerful and loyal, which means we're also useful, and not just as an example of what comes from defying him. I'm an outcast and I'll probably never father children, but they tolerate me because I can kill most any battle-mage I meet. If the madness takes me on the battlefield so much the better, because that means scores of enemy dead." Her stare sharpened and he couldn't really blame her, considering how many of her so-called cousins he'd killed.
"I'm going to lose control eventually, though," he continued, suddenly too conscious of the points of his teeth, of the considering way she was looking at his eyes and pale hair. "Kid would prefer I be useful before then. Your father tells me that Weapons and battle-mages can form a bond, if they're compatible in some mystical way he can't describe. He's convinced Kid not to turn me into a lich and not to kill you outright or try to raise you from the dead if we can form such a bond, because in theory I can control you through it and you can somehow help me stay sane."
"And this bond will keep me alive?" she asked, no longer at ease, leaning forward with a fine tension beginning in her shoulders.
Soul shrugged. "So Spirit claims," he said, and found himself wanting to try it right there, to take whatever power the two of them might gain if only to use it to get away from the miserable situation that had become his entire life. "According to him it will make both of us more than we were, if we let it. Kid likes the idea of controlling you through me because attempting to raise you as a lich is risky, even for him. Better to have you alive and forced to obey him than fail to raise you and have your revenant kill us all."
She watched him for a long silent moment, then stood despite how much effort it obviously cost her and took a few deliberate paces to the bars of her cell, shackled hands rising to curl round the bars. "I think you're lying," she said, tone more than a little judgemental. "Not about the bond," she clarified when he made to protest. "About being descended from an insane heretic. That's as may be but I don't believe for a second that you're content with biding your time until the day you go mad and they kill you - and if you are, then you're not worth my time or anyone else's and you deserve to have your line end with you."
"Believe what you want," Soul growled, standing though he didn't remember moving. "It doesn't matter. Defying them would serve no purpose other than getting me killed even earlier. What I believe regarding my inheritance has no bearing at all on my reality, and I'm not about to get myself killed for no damn reason when it's just as easy to pretend like I believe the nonsense Kid spouts regarding my bloodline."
She snorted, green eyes all vitriol, and Soul realized that he'd closed the distance between them, was a bare step from the cell bars. "Won't die for no reason, will you?" she asked, staring up at him and giving the very distinct impression of looking down at him. "So the plan is to do what you're told and live for no reason instead? Pathetic."
"I am the only thing standing between you and eternity as a slave to Kid," Soul said in a rasping growl, barely able to keep still because the alternative was breaking everything and the world had gone red around the edges yet again. She was a witch's pawn, an abomination, mass murderer, and she thought she had the right to judge him -
"And apparently you need to use me as an excuse in order to do anything that even remotely resembles taking charge of your life," Maka said, spine straight and chin high, proud and deadly and Soul remembered that this was the Scourge, this was the woman who had killed something like hundreds of his kin and it showed, made itself glaringly evident even in the way she stood and spoke and looked at him. "Death Scythe thinks you're strong enough to deny me anything but what little power is required to keep me alive? You're all fools." She lifted her hands, threaded the shackles between the cell bars, reached for him as best she could and hissed a challenge. "Try it. I look forward to burning this cesspool to the ground."
The world was more than just red round the edges, and it was getting hard to think coherently enough to force it down - Soul bared his teeth and made to take that last step forward and something arced between them, something skin-prickling in a way that goaded because it promised power and he was so certain that her soul would taste better than anything ever had before -
A sound intruded, of something hitting stone that came with an unsettlingly bone-humming impact; the light dimmed; cold crawled over his skin and Soul snapped back to reality with a freezing jolt. He had just enough time to register that Maka was giving him a very wary look from several paces back from the bars, caution and maybe just the slightest hint of fear in her green eyes, before another footstep sounded down the hall. It was enough. He knew that power and that darkness, and he didn't need to see Spirit taking a knee down the hall to know what was coming.
"You cling to your sanity another day, then, mongrel," Kid said when he got close, and Soul didn't move from where he'd knelt with his back to the wall, eyes very, very carefully on the stone floor. "It's good that you've managed, because now you may at last be of real use to me, not that it will salvage your cursed bloodline. Stand up. I don't think either of us is in danger of forgetting who holds power here."
Soul stood, too stubborn to avoid the man's amused stare, though his eyes were unnerving even on the best days - and not just because they were the gleaming gold of fresh-minted coins. Kid's coloring was a little unnerving as a whole, actually; he had skin the color of sun-bleached bone and pitch-black hair interrupted by three shocking white streaks, offset deliberately by clothing as ink-dark as his hair and a death's-head amulet at his throat. That said, Lord Death's son was not a large man; by Soul's reckoning he was probably not much taller than the Scourge herself, who barely cleared Soul's collarbones, and didn't have a lot of breadth on her either. He had a pleasant enough face and a graceful carriage that implied noble blood, and his voice when he spoke might have been rich and reassuring had it not been weighted with so much power that Soul's bones ached with it - had it not left a taste in the air like ashes and bone dust, had the death-magic in it not slithered across Soul's skin like snakeskin husks.
"And this is the fabled Scourge," Kid continued, turning his attention to the woman in the cell, who stopped giving Soul a look of utter contempt long enough to meet Kid's eyes without even a twitch to show that she found him or his magic worth wasting her time on. "That you can even stand with your link to the witch severed is more than testament enough to your mettle. I almost hope this experiment of Spirit's fails, just so that I'll have the chance to possess you. How would your little family react to finding you facing them on the field, I wonder?"
"How will you react when I tear out your heart," Maka snarled, and Soul kind of - twitched, unconsciously, in response to the killing intent behind her words.
Kid just laughed, one hand rising to curl around the pendant nestled in the hollow of his throat. "You lot are quite savage, I'll give you that," he said, and gave Soul a sly, sidelong look. "It's almost a shame that you're an affront to nature. You should be well suited to this one, though. Without my father's civilizing influence he's little more than a rabid dog."
She looked at him again then, the disdain in her stare enough to make Soul flinch, if only internally. "A rabid dog wouldn't allow himself to be cowed so," she said, almost sneering.
Gold eyes flicked his way, and Kid smirked when he spoke, something hungry in his stare. "Perhaps you have a point, witch-spawn," he said, and licked his lips. "Well, perhaps you'll kill each other and save me the trouble of putting one or both of you down once you've outlived your usefulness. Your agony sustains me just as well as your blood or your souls; do put on a good show, and see that you don't keep me waiting."
And then he was - gone, dissolved into the shadows with a rush of breathless cold.
