A/N: This has taken so long, that I think apologizing would be cocky.
Thank you so much for your reviews and opinions and any kind of feedback on my wordvomit, for that matter. It makes me happy.
I hope that everything is okay and that you can try and enjoy this!
Soul remembers Maka telling him about her obsession to not forget anything that was on her mind on each and every particular period of her long childhood. She'd say that at the time, those thoughts were all she had and she truly believed in them. Just thinking that one day she'd go against her then ideology, not even realising it, frightened her.
She said to always believe her when she told him something, when she told him things that may seem strange or even impossible to him. She made him promise, because she herself promised that whatever came out of her mouth when addressing him was clear, pure truth. Processed and judged to be true by her, so if he was gonna resonate with her, he'd have to trust her words and believe them to be truthful.
In resonance, he's seen everything safely calculated, proof-read, proof-thought. Everything in its right place. Stable and certain.
So, he believes her. He backs off whenever she tells him to, he transforms at the first syllable of his name and he'd habitually believe her if she said that the world was a lie and that she was an illusion.
So now he's trailing behind her, stopping when she stops, walking when she walks. She seems familiar with everything and she sounds to be measuring distances. Counting her strides and the trees they pass.
His bare feet are annoyingly defenceless against the damp branches and leaves and dirt he's stepping onto. He's come far enough into the forest now and going back to get his shoes would be counterproductive.
She finally stops and looks up at the patches of cloudy sky that show through the thicker high branches. He sighs and leans against a tree that's so conveniently tilted and he's busy feeling grateful for the unexpected comfort, when something wraps around his ankle. Suddenly he's shifting his arm into a blade to stab into the trunk and avoid falling on his butt. The tree is evidently harder than steel, though, so it's the ground he meets.
"What are you doing?" Maka asks and her voice cracks in a chuckle.
She extends her arm at him and he takes it.
"It felt like something-" he gets up, "-grabbed my leg."
She looks at the ground around him and gives him a calculating look. "Try not to shift, okay?"
"Can't."
"Don't, though. Please?"
'You're being too careless' is on the tip of his tongue when a gust of earth scented wind seems to lift every fallen leaf and make it whirl and dance around the old trees. He closes his eyes to protect them from being destroyed. When he opens them, he can make out Maka's figure in front of him and his arms and neck are tingling. He squints to see what's happening, but the light that comes through is extremely inadequate now, he finds.
"Stay still," she says and her voice sounds far.
He's getting goosebumps and he feels the need to jerk and twist and get those damn mosquitoes off him. Is she trying to resonate with him? Because he's sure he can feel something that is not his own in his head, but that's not what soul resonance feels like. This is not what Maka feels like. He opens his eyes wide and what he can see looks more like the inside of his eyelids than a forest and a girl, which is what he expects.
Echoes are asking him what he's made of and how he came to be. Why is he here, why is he white and red, why is he black and red, why so black? What is this black, what does it mean? There is no green in him, there is no brown. He's all black and silver and red, and his fur is white, why? Is he a threat? He can't be, yet a threat flows through his veins, enlarging and minimising at will. Is it his own will that commands it?
And what is this, here? Furiously and hastily sealed, colours of another hue, colours earthly and warm, welcoming but obscure, decomposed and then reconstructed. Where is the key to these parts? How can they be affected?
Scratches, boy, they heal and they mend and sizzle their way under your skin. Scratches and cuts and bruises, what have you been doing? You've been taking red in, consuming red, consuming evil, do you expect to heal? Do you expect to come out clean? Do you expect no marks, everything to stay the same, untouched?
What is green and what are trees, do you know? What are you and why are you here? You repeat a name, you repeat your name, is it yours? Who is this you have with you, do you know?
Shush now and open up. Shut up now, and open up, and see what's it here and face what's in here and start using the correct words and names.
There is so little of you inside of you, there is so much of everything else. Control and barriers, borders, lines. They don't work , they will not work. You can't push us out, you can't even open your eyes.
Can you remember before or has it all been mixed into your cold talent?
He can't think of the answers. The commotion in his head leaves room for little else and he can only use it to try and get back to normality. He pushes to snap out of it, opens his mouth to call a name familiar, but he can't find the right ways to move his mouth and use the air in his lungs to produce sound.
He can smell scents of long ago, smells of old rooms and rusty fence gates, smells an of old people's house, of an unopened house. He can hear high pitched notes. Different values try to match each other, clunks and nails hitting old ivory try to match flowing melody.
Forgotten thoughts and heavy sinkers latch onto his chest and he blindly obeys his instincts of needed defence.
The tingling has stopped and his mind is empty. He sees feet in front of him, bare feet dirtied with soil and mud. He finds his fingers pressing onto his head and feels the familiar sting of a cut. He's more than relieved.
"What did you do?!" Maka shouts from above him and falls on her knees.
She looks at him with furrowed brows and he follows her gaze to his arm, which is bleeding on his ripped jacket.
"What was that?" he asks in an unintended whisper.
"How did you do this?" she asks.
"What was that?" he repeats.
"Stand still for a seco- hey! Don't- don't. Soul, stand still."
"Were you doing something? Because, in my head. I couldn't see and everything was being poked at, but it wasn't you."
"Can you deal with the bleeding? Because I can't find my- and why did we have to- ugh." She looks around and all confidence and calm has left her movements. "Can you?" she asks, holding up the bottom part of her shirt and pointing at his hand.
"It wasn't voices, because, how clichéd would that be? I suppose I get what you can't tell me, but, did this happen to you too?"
"Soul!" she commands.
"Oh." He shifts the finger she's holding up and she murmurs curses under her breath as she's cutting fabric off of her white shirt.
"If you'd only stayed still," she says, bandaging the cut. She sounds truly sad and not disappointed in him, so grumbled empty insults and defences are not uttered.
Soul seems to be having particularly vivid dreams, from what she gathers. He is tossing and turning, hiding under the covers more often than throwing them off him. She's glad he hasn't accidentally smacked her yet, considering how often she's had to go over to his bed and make soothing sounds or untangle his legs from the sheets when he pulls and pulls to get them over his head but gets nowhere.
Well, she doesn't exactly have to, but she's been having pangs of regret digging right through her thick skull and making her question the motives that led her to take him to 'meet her new friends', as he likes to phrase it.
He slept during the train-ride home and collapsed on the bed as soon as they got in the room. She hopes he wakes up soon, on his own accord. She hopes his sleep becomes a little more pleasant and she hopes the trouble and frustration that had settled on his brow and on his shoulders fade away and disappear. She hopes he says that they can resonate so that she can go inside of his soul and see what's in there.
She climbs in bed with him and she pushes him a little so that she can fit and not fall off. He stops moving for a second and she's worried that he's gonna throw her off the bed and name her an enemy. She hugs him and hopes he remembers who she is, amidst dreaming and waking, and he does. He wraps arms and legs around her and nestles his head between her arms.
"You ok?" she asks.
"Fucked up and scared of mind crawlers," he says and takes a deep breath.
She caresses too-long hair and after a while he's sound asleep.
She smiles at the effectiveness of her breasts and the feeling of safety they seem to provide and mentally notes to tell him that she isn't any kind of mother figure, especially to him.
She stays awake and keeps watch for mind crawlers, bad dreams and stray demon thoughts.
A/N: Thanks for reading! As always and of course, anything you want to say or do is very very welcome.