Soul doesn't sleep that night.
Morning dawns like a stab to the stomach, reds and oranges bleeding across the sky in softening hues until the sun climbs above the horizon. In just a few hours, Maka will show up at his door with her violin in hand and expect him to come to the talent show ready to take notes on the competition.
Moving is beyond him at the moment, so he just stares at the ceiling and listens to the stillness of his room. It vibrates in his head with the weight of an inhaled breath, that moment where the world pauses and anything could happen, and, god, it's so loud.
Eventually, he gets up and pulls on a tee and the first pair of jeans he can find, mindlessly shoving his phone into a pocket and stepping on an unwrapped granola bar that he throws into his backpack after a moment's consideration.
By the time he gets to school, Maka is leaning on his locker with a tight smile on her lips and murderous intent in her eyes.
"They moved the talent show to second period," she says tersely when he gets close enough to hear her. "So be ready to pay attention. Particularly to their pacing and coordination - we know they're both decent players on their own, but it'll be their teamwork that we're really playing against."
Soul nods and leaves his hand on his locker without opening it. He's never been the most competitive person in the world, preferring to coast indifferently through life, but Maka. She's always been ambitious, gunning for the top spot in everything she does, be it school or music or even a hobby. One time, she aggressively knitted nearly 300 sweaters for penguins recovering from an oil spill because Ox loudly proclaimed he was going to knit 200.
So as she leads him to his first period class with a plan to meet her in front of the lockers again before the talent show, he nods and even gives her the ghost of a determined smile.
"See you soon," she says, casually saluting and striding down the hall to her own classroom.
He spends first period twirling a pencil between his fingers so he doesn't vibrate into the next dimension bouncing his legs. If he can't hear the music again, well, he can't really think about that because there's not much they can do if it leaves him. Part of him still hopes that it's just something temporary, something that will disappear if he believes hard enough or can somehow right whatever cosmic wrongs he committed by not being a good enough brother or son or friend, but most of him thinks that this is fitting and that he deserves this cruel twist of fate for not appreciating what he had while he still had it.
Second period comes too soon, but Blake accosts him outside of his classroom before he can get very far.
"Good luck, break some legs, drop bows on 'em and all that," he says between some rapidfire finger guns, somehow managing not to trip over the giant ring of glowsticks trailing behind him like the train of a rave-themed wedding dress.
"Do I even want to know?" Soul says in response, not the only one in the hallway eyeing Blake's accessory.
"What? I got bored in class. Just wanted to show some support before you and Maka listen to the competition." Adjusting his - necklace? - with a flourish, he continues. "I also thought I'd pass along something Tsu told me earlier. She said she overheard Jackie saying something bad about Maka, like she's surprised Maka's back 'given her situation.'"
Soul frowns at this, but doesn't get a chance to respond because Maka appears behind him them and yanks him off towards the auditorium with only minimal eye rolling at Blake. She secures good seats in the middle front, the better to hear Kim and Jackie play and see small details in their styles, or so she says, and hugs her violin to her chest as she settles in. It's never far from her these days.
Another classmate of theirs, a tall, pale boy who straddles the line between cool and nerdy by being both one of the most talented skaters in the school and also the head of the honor society, introduces the talent show contestants. Soul doesn't pay much attention while the boy goes through the list of names and what they'll be performing; he has more important things to worry about, like the sly way Kim keeps looking at Maka and how Jackie won't meet his gaze.
When it's their turn, Kim and Jackie walk onstage amidst polite applause and bow. Jackie hardly looks at the audience and instead walks right over to the piano to test its pedals and adjust the bench. It's good not to pay them too much attention anyway, as it can get in the way of the focus needed to do well. She's good if she knows this.
The auditorium quiets when Kim raises her violin and sets her bow atop it, confidence implicit in her casual stance and easy smile. The silence only lasts a moment before Kim dives into the song, her music imbued with a kind of lighthearted intensity that gets stuck in Soul's head. She weaves her sound above and around Jackie's muted but steady accompaniment, somehow managing to both support and be supported by it in what Soul knows is the culmination of hours of practice and an innate sense of how the other is going to play.
About partway through the piece, Soul notices Jackie begin to subtly take the lead and build her own tempo into the hole Kim has left for her. Her growing intensity in the major keys and skillful increase in volume amplify the strident sound from Kim's rapidly flowing violin until the moment their sounds coalesce into something new and whole and glimmering.
They end on a strong, ringing note, and everyone in attendance rises to their feet for a standing ovation. Soul glances at Maka and sees her stand slowly, brows furrowed while she claps politely and strains her neck to see over the people standing in front of them. He wonders what she thought, and if she's as nervous as he is after that flawless performance.
Before he could do as much as nudge her, though, Kim clears her throat and raises her arms in what is probably meant to be a benevolent gesture but comes across looking a bit sinister.
"Thank you, dear students and staff. We're so happy you could come listen to us today as we prepare for the entrance performance for Shibusen Academy. But, as you know, we're not the only ones vying for these exclusive spots." She glances predatorily at Soul and Maka. "There are others hoping to get in as well, and wouldn't it be great to hear them play too?"
The crowd murmurs their assent while Kim continues to look at them like a cat would eye particularly juicy mice.
"So what do you say, you two? Care to play something for us? We're dying to hear what Death City's oldest duo sounds like these days."
"Of course we'll play," Maka snaps, defiant as always in the face of a challenge, while dragging Soul wholesale through the people boxing them into their row and murderously stomping onstage. "In fact, we'd be delighted."
Groaning, Soul takes his place at the piano as Jackie leaves, her face carefully neutral when she nods politely at him.
"Good luck," she says quietly on her way off stage, and something about the way she says it makes the hair on his arms stand up and dread pool in his stomach.
"We're fine," Maka mutters, glaring at Kim and Jackie as they take their seats in the front of the auditorium and grimacing when Kim blows them a kiss. "Let's do the Rondo again - no need to show them anything new."
"Mm." As Soul sits at the piano waiting for Maka to uncase her violin, he can't help but listen to the whispers drifting onstage.
Isn't he the orphan?
He came from that really musical family, right? The ones who all died a few years ago?
Why haven't we heard anything from him? Is he just not as good?
I really miss the way his brother played. There was something so magical about it.
Yeah, he misses it, too. With a deep breath, he adjusts his position at the piano and looks to Maka to see if she's ready yet. Violin tucked neatly under her chin, she nods at him once and gives him a small, genuine smile before turning to the audience. He watches the set of her shoulders for that small moment they relax, an old tell, and meets her when the first notes slide from her violin.
Almost immediately, he can't hear the piano. His hands move mechanically along the keys, still as gray and lifeless as they were when Wes banished whatever tiny fraction of his music he'd been able to recover. Without even thirty seconds of sound to help him gauge volume and tempo, he has to rely completely on the notes from her violin and his best guess at how quiet he needs to be.
She plays so quickly, though, charging forward in equal parts ferocity and the kind of attention to detail borne from hundreds of hours spent reading music theory books, and it fills him with a bittersweet longing he didn't know he was still capable of feeling. He doesn't have long to focus on it, though, because she soon begins adding her own flourish to the music and he flounders trying to improvise with her.
But then, curiously, Maka falters. It's a small mistake at first, but something he's sure she'd never usually mess up. It sounds like her fingering is off, a few ugly notes mixed into the otherwise smooth, gliding sounds. He thinks nothing of it until it happens again, and then again.
Worried, he looks up to see her breathing hard, fingers twitching erratically along the violin's neck and body moving disjointedly behind her bowing arm. Sweat makes her face shine and highlights the purple smears beneath her eyes that haven't seemed to disappear even though she leaves practice at a reasonable hour every day.
She suddenly shifts to a quicker tempo, though, so Soul has to focus on his own playing just to keep up. It's like she's on a train that's lost its brakes, careening into measure after measure with an unchained kind of chaos that he never thought he'd hear from her. He desperately tries to blend his sound into hers, but it's too late and he's probably too far off himself. Her music ricochets through the hall, splattering blood-red against the walls of the auditorium with each sawing, grating note.
They stumble through the end of the song, and while Soul is technically unsure how he sounds, it's probably more stable than stumbling, rampaging Maka. She stabs out the last note like a killing blow and then immediately rushes offstage, dodging around the stunned tech students.
Soul bows hastily to the audience and heads in the same direction, barely catching the hint of a smirk on Kim's face and a look of resignation on Jackie's before darting through the side doors.
Once he's in the hall, he listens, hoping to catch a hint of her footsteps on the tiled floor, and sure enough, he can hear someone rapidly moving towards the exit. He stumbles into a jerky half-run and gets to the opposite end of the hall just as Maka is shoving through the double doors that lead to the parking lot.
"Hey, wait up," he calls, following her out and wincing when the strong sunlight nearly blinds him.
Maka keeps walking though, maybe even faster than before, and god damn it all, Soul starts to run. There's no way she's okay after a performance like that, and it just doesn't sit right with him to leave her alone when he knows all too well how much failure is amplified in the echo chamber of your thoughts.
She reaches the edge of the parking lot and then stumbles, tripping and falling onto her hands with a small gasp of pain.
"Jeez, Maka are you-"
"I'm fine," she snaps, wobbling on her way back to standing. "I just let Kim get in my head too much. You don't have to baby me."
Soul recoils at the bitterness in her voice and just manages not to let the hurt contort his face. "Yeah, well, 'm not babying you, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Isn't that what friends do?"
Her expression softens into something more tired than angry, and she sighs. "You're right, I'm sorry. It's just frustrating, you know?"
"Yeah," he says quietly, watching her blink a few too many times while she dusts herself off. "I know."
"I don't want to go back in there." She's staring at the front doors and flexing her hands, looking truly lost for the first time since he's known her. Maka's always had a plan, always had a strategy for victory, but losing is uncharted territory for her. That's more up his alley.
"D'you wanna leave? I can bring you home if you want."
She nibbles her lip, considering. "No, we probably shouldn't. We have to make the most of the time we're in school, right?"
Soul smiles weakly. "Sure. If you don't wanna practice today though, I understand. Maybe rest up or something."
"No, it's fine. I'll be over at the same time. You heard them - we can't afford to miss practice."
"I guess not."
With a short sigh, Maka pulls herself all the way up and squares her shoulders, glancing at him before she starts to walk back into school. "Hey, thanks. For checking up on me."
"Yeah, no problem." He thinks of how much energy she's put into helping him with both music and schoolwork since they've become friends again, and how he's just drifted along in her wake. "You can count on me, yanno, for stuff like that. Or if you wanna just come over to get away from your dad or whatever, that's cool, too. We're partners, right?"
She smiles, though her hands wander to her violin case almost tiredly. "Yeah, partners."
/
Soul stops by the store on his way home and grabs a pint of strawberries, heavy cream, and more shortcake. After a day like today, she deserves something nice.
He's just putting down the hand mixer when he hears the doorbell ring. He scurries to scoop out the fresh whipped cream into an inverted gallon bag so he can answer it. But by the time he finishes getting it settled, there are footsteps coming towards the kitchen and he turns around to the sight of Maka plunking her violin down by the foot of the table and collapsing into a barstool.
"How did you-"
"You haven't moved the spare key hiding spot," she says from beneath crossed arms, voice muffled by the countertop.
"Oh." He glances from Maka to the bag in his hand and decides he might as well get the shortcakes assembled while she groans to herself. With sharp, practiced motions, he pipes whipped cream onto the cakes and layers the strawberries atop them. A dusting of powdered sugar later, he slides a plate along the countertop near Maka's head.
She grumbles when he pokes her. "C'mon grumpy, I made you a snack. See, this time they had strawberries."
A low grunt is all he gets in return. He prods her arm with the plate. "Wanna talk about it?"
"Not really," she says, emerging from her folded arms with all of the speed and energy of a hamstrung tortoise. Sighing, she looks at the shortcake. "You didn't have to do this."
Soul scratches his neck. "I wanted to."
"Well, thanks," she says and takes a small bite, the juice from a particularly ripe berry dripping down the corner of her mouth and staining her lips bright red.
"So, are you ready to practice?" he asks after a few more minutes of watching her push her strawberries around the plate and stack pieces of shortcake in increasingly precarious piles.
"Yeah, I guess." She takes her time getting up and, instead of striding towards the practice room like she always does, does some slow toe touches and side bends.
"What are you looking at? We've been sitting all day. It's not healthy to sit for so long without some kind of exercise," Maka says when she notices Soul's quirked eyebrow. "Actually-" The tiredness disappears from her eyes while she looks at him, and a mischievous grin blooms on her face. "How about we warm up first? Tag, you're it!" She lunges forward to tap him on the shoulder and then darts back towards the main hallway.
"Maka, what the hell-"
"You've always been slow, Evans. You couldn't catch me if you tried."
Something about the challenge in her tone lights his blood on fire. "You're on, Albarn," he growls, scurrying around the island and grabbing for her arm. But she's quick, nimbly dodging just out of reach and sprinting towards the entrance hall, and Soul chases after her without missing a beat.
There are moments when he almost catches up, when he can feel the wind from her flying form, but she always leaps around a corner just before he can touch her. It's not long before he's panting because, well, he doesn't run much, but once Maka ducks behind another corner, he hears her footsteps slow and finally stop.
Jogging to catch up, he comes face to face with Maka staring at Wes's door and the handkerchief lying on the floor beside it.
"You know, Wes gave me his old violin before I left," she says quietly, not taking her eyes off of the door. "He said it'd give me good luck and keep me safe, but I can't help thinking that maybe that's why-" Her voice breaks, just a little, and she stops talking.
Soul can see her shoulders shaking and is torn between comforting her and simply leaving, since the prospect of being this close to his brother's room with all of the unfinished business between them makes the hallway shrink and his heart race.
"It's his." She's looking at the handkerchief, voice rough.
"Yeah." When Maka is quiet, Soul keeps talking, something about the still-present urge to comfort her loosening his tongue. "He left the night of the concert without it. I saw him drop it, and it was his lucky handkerchief, the one he'd wave at all his fangirls and the paparazzi and stuff, and I saw him drop it but I didn't say anything and let him leave without it. So, you know, it's not you." His throat is tight and time does that dripping thing again, warping and slowing so he's forced to notice every excruciating detail of her face as she listens.
"He wouldn't want this, would he." Maka gestures broadly at the hallway and the handkerchief and the two of them, eyes glistening, and her hand stops outstretched towards him, palm up, both a cause of and a salve to the pressure building white-hot in his chest.
"I should've stopped him, or been there, or..." he whispers, words tight and toxic in his throat. "I don't deserve to be alive."
The following silence roars in his ears, and he hardly registers Maka's fingers sliding between his as he replays his final view of Wes, handkerchief slipping softly to the ground while he hurried to be on time for the last concert he'd ever play.
Then the air is knocked from his lungs by two tiny, terrifyingly strong arms. "This isn't your fault, Soul," Maka says fiercely from somewhere around his ribcage. "Sometimes bad things happen, and it's not fair, and it sucks, and you wonder why it happened to you when it could have happened to any of the other seven billion people out there, but you know what? You can't change what's happened. You can only change what you do next, and sometimes those options aren't great either - but you're not alone, not as long as I'm here. And you do deserve to live, because you are alive and that's all the reason anyone needs."
She hugs him tighter, and he can barely choke out her name before she releases him and steps back, staring at the floor. "Don't leave me alone," she murmurs, still not making eye contact, and Soul crumbles inside because despite everything, he never, ever could.
He still has no words, so he just stands and listens to her breathe. Wes's handkerchief is just a few feet away, still locked in the past, and just the thought of his brother summons him, materializing next to the handkerchief with a sneer.
"She's lying, you know," he whispers as he walks to stand behind her. "You should have died with us."
"No, no." Soul starts pacing and tugs on his hair sharply, hoping the pain will jolt him out of this hallucination because he doesn't want Maka to see him like this, but it doesn't work. He can see the wallpaper through Wes's exposed cheekbones, and Wes bends to drape his hands around Maka's neck and peers around the side of her head while she looks at him, concerned.
"Oh, but it's true. Maka's always wished that it was you who died that night - you're just the next best thing." He's level with her head now, his bow jutting ominously from both sides of her neck as he continues to gently caress the line of her jaw.
Instead of answering, Soul takes a step back toward the handkerchief and Wes stiffens. "You're not brave enough," Wes snarls, releasing Maka and gliding toward him. "You wouldn't dare."
Glancing from Wes to Maka, Soul takes another step back and twists to pick up the handkerchief, the fabric discolored and dusty but still soft. "Goodbye, Wes," Soul says quietly, under his breath, as he folds it into his pocket just like Wes showed him way back when.
There's no explosion, no grand fanfare, as Wes simply begins to fade away. If anything, the hallway seems a little bit brighter once Wes finally disappears.
"Soul, are you okay?" Maka is glancing around the room at the last few places he'd been staring.
"Yeah, I'm fine now," he replies, standing up. "Just thought it was time I picked this up."
Her eyes are damp but she's smiling, now. "He'd definitely want you to have it."
"Yeah," he says, patting his pocket, looking at the empty space beside her. "I think you're right."
/
Soul begins to sleep.
Not always, and definitely not as consistently as he'd prefer, but it sure as hell beats the three or four day sleepless spurts spent paranoid that someone is in the house with him when he simply forgot he turned on the television. Mornings aren't so bad anymore either, not when he's blindsided by an appetite the size of Death City and actually prepares for it.
His mother's favorite cookbook has been buried under assorted kitchen clutter for years now, and he digs it out when the thought of Poptarts or yogurt for breakfast seems laughably inadequate. Some pages are marked with neat paper clips or strips of paper, and he flips to one that has a recipe for apple cinnamon breakfast bars. He smiles, noting the oily fingerprint stains from when he and Wes would help Mother cook, and turns on the oven.
School is likewise more bearable, both because the extra sleep appears to correlate directly with an increased attention span and because all of Maka's tutoring has had time to sink in. He passes his next two exams, if not with flying colors then with enough improvement to earn a lazy half-smile from Mr. Stein and a small nod of acknowledgement.
Music, though. That still eludes him.
"Try again. You were close that time." Maka is pacing alongside the piano, hair still wild from riding over with him after school, something Soul is still getting used to because she sort of just started showing up at his bike and raising an eyebrow as if to say what took you so long?
"Are you deaf? I lost it like two minutes in. If anything, I'm getting worse."
"This won't change overnight-"
"It's been a month, Maka. I'm beginning to think this isn't gonna happen." Soul leans back on the bench in the practice hall and exhales, opening and closing his hands so he doesn't succumb to the urge to punch the piano.
"Of course it will happen," Maka says, walking closer to the piano from the window seat she'd been sitting on. "But you need to-"
"If you tell me I need to 'believe in myself' or something like that, I'm gonna flip this piano," he growls, standing abruptly and pacing away from her.
"If you'd have listened instead of cutting me off, then you'd know I was going to say you need to keep digging for it because it isn't going to happen by getting angry and giving up," she snaps, following him to the corner and turning him around so she can see his face. "Look, I know this is frustrating, but you can't give up. We're actually sounding a lot better together."
Soul shrugs out of her grip and half turns, the weight of her stare too strong for him to bear. "Better won't beat Jackie and Kim. We both heard them, Maka. Unless we somehow score higher than them in the entrance exam, we're not gonna make it into Shibusen. It's-" he hesitates, looking at his shoes as he grinds out, "it's better for you if you drop me. You could easily make it in without me as dead weight."
Suddenly he's twirled around again, back hitting the wall near the window with a dull thud. "Oh, is that what you think?" Maka asks, eyes flashing dangerously. "Silly me, of course you'd know what's best for me. You have all the answers, don't you? When will you understand that I've made my decision and that you're the one I want to play with? You have to trust me, or this partnership will never work." She releases him and stalks back to the piano, sitting at the bench and taking a deep breath. When she looks at him again, the anger has been replaced with shrewd calculation, and Soul swallows. That look never ends well for him.
"Come here," she says, patting the bench next to her. "I have an idea."
"Idea for what?" he asks, cautiously sitting beside her.
Their hands brush when he settles in, and again there's that sense of belonging, a rightness in the physicality of being skin to skin.
She looks at him, something soft swirling behind her eyes before they're shielded by steel once more. "Do you trust me?" she says, and waits.
"Of course I trust you," Soul protests. "Hell, I wouldn't have played with you the first time if I didn't trust you-"
"Then prove it."
"Prove it how?"
"Give me your handkerchief."
"But that was Wes's-"
"Do you trust me?"
Slowly, Soul removes Wes's handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to Maka. He looks from it to her meaningfully, and she nods.
"Thank you. Do you have one of your own?"
"Why do you need these, again?"
She gives him a level look. "I'm asking the questions, here."
"Okay, yeah, I do. It's with my suits, though."
"Go get it. I'll wait."
With a dubious shrug, Soul leaves to grab one of his own handkerchiefs and returns to the practice hall, passing it to her once he sits back down at the piano.
She takes the two of them and knots two of their corners together so it's more like a small dish towel in size and then turns to him. "Okay, I'm going to tie it around your head now so you won't be able to see anything."
"What?" Soul yelps, scooting away defensively. "What good will that do?"
"All this time you've been relying on your sight when you can't hear the music anymore, and maybe that's doing more harm than good. Maybe you won't be able to get your sound back until you pull it from somewhere your eyes can't see." She folds the handkerchief in half and then in half again before holding it up expectantly.
Soul holds his breath. The thought of being blind scares him, but more than that the thought that he might still fail after this is terrifying. Up until now, he's always been able to mask his deafness by being able to see, and this will take that away from him. If he fails now-
"Trust me," Maka says. "I won't let anything bad happen to you."
Soul's laugh is more like a whimper. "You can't protect me from myself."
"True, but I already know you can handle yourself. Trust goes both ways, remember?"
It does. Looking at Maka sitting so determinedly, with such confidence in her eyes (about him, no less), gives him strength. He nods.
Maka's fingers brush the back of his head while she ties a small knot in the kerchief and then Soul's world is dark. Just two small pinpricks of light enter near the bridge of his nose, but it's not enough to see anything meaningful by.
"Okay, here's how this is going to work," Maka says. "You're going to play an easy song, something like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, a few measures at a time, and I'm going to repeat back to you what you just played. Got it?"
Soul nods, and Maka places his hands on the keys. "Your middle finger is on C. Start playing."
Hesitantly, Soul plays the first few notes of Twinkle Twinkle and pauses, hearing what he just played echoed back to him in the lower register by Maka. He smiles at the stutters in her sound; while Wes might have taught her the basics, she never took to the piano like she did the violin.
It's his turn again so he plays the next few measures of the song and waits for her to repeat it, hearing her become more confident each round. Somehow hearing what he's playing through her lets him relax a little, maybe because now it feels like they're both fighting this thing out together after so long spent fighting it alone.
They continue on like this for a minute or two before Soul feels the familiar dulling of his senses that pulls him away from his sound. He falters on the next note, no longer sure which keys he's on, and has his fears confirmed when Maka plays him back a disjointed string of notes.
Straining to catch any noise he might be making, Soul closes his eyes beneath the blindfold to no avail; all he hears is Maka's steady breathing and a small shifting of clothes on the piano bench. Her next repetition is a jarring clamor of mismatched keys and just-off chords, and Soul exhales quickly through his nose in frustration. Maka slides closer to him then, so that they're connected by the sides of their thighs on the bench, and he leans into the magnetic pull of her contact.
"How about you try a different song?" Maka suggests, tapping out the first few notes of Mary Had a Little Lamb.
He begins what he's relatively sure is the correct opening measure and is rewarded with Maka's answering notes ringing true. But his next turn goes sour when it turns out he is half a register too high. Frustrated, he drags out a short glissando and ends with his hands balled into fists on the keys, shaking slightly. To his surprise, Maka copies his notes as best she can given the nature of his outburst and then stills, expectant. She doesn't goad him or try to talk him into playing, just sits and waits for him like she knows beyond a doubt that he'll play.
Her quiet confidence emboldens him and he starts again, focusing less on physical cues than on how it makes him feel. Soon he loses himself in the echoes of Maka's sound, which become stronger and stronger and begin to remind him of looking in a funhouse mirror, approximately the same but with some parts blown out of proportion. It's strange but also comforting to hear his notes echoed and distorted through her, to hear her sketch a rough outline of who he is in her mind.
As he continues to play, the pauses between Maka's responses grow shorter until she no longer pauses, needing to constantly play to keep up with the music flowing from his fingertips. He thinks of her, of Wes, of his parents, and of all the things he wishes he could have told them as he finally, wholeheartedly, surrenders.
A torrent of different colored feelings attack him, loud reds and melancholy lavenders and indifferent grays, and he accepts them all. Directing their energy to the piano, he simply plays, no longer worried about hitting every single note just right as he instead welcomes the tumultuous sound he hears from Maka's side of the piano.
Except then he feels warm hands on the front of his face as his blindfold is pushed up and he's squinting into Maka's grinning face. "That was beautiful," she says, throwing her arms around him in a tight, fierce hug. "I knew you could do it."
"Do what? I just played some things and you played them back…" he trails off as he replays his final minutes in his mind; they were higher on the register than he remembers Maka being able to reach from her position. "Oh."
"'Oh' is right. That was all you the last four or so minutes. I gave up trying to keep up with you after a while."
Feeling raw and drained, like he'd actually offered some vital piece of himself to the piano, Soul takes in the swath of keys before him with his newly retrieved sight and hovers a finger over a random note. He plinks it, and the clear sound of a high G pierces the room. Heart pounding, he turns back to Maka as a slow, wondrous smile spreads across his face. "I can hear it again. It's clear, it's-" He stops to go back and play a few measures of Chopin and then, like bubbles spilling from trapped air at the bottom of the sea, he laughs. Rich, deep, cathartic laughter fills the room in addition to his scraps of song, and when his stomach hurts and his mouth is sore from smiling, he brings a hand to his face and realizes his cheeks are wet.
Maka is grinning at him, eyes shining with happiness and confidence and something he doesn't understand, and he wants to crystalize this moment forever. Taking his hand in hers, she squeezes it and murmurs, "I'm proud of you. That didn't sound easy."
"It wasn't."
They sit in silence for a moment while Soul just breathes, letting the joy at being able to hear his music again settle deep inside his bones. He notices her breathing sync with his and gets an idea, a very self-indulgent idea, but he's still flying high enough on his victory that he's not afraid to ask.
"Hey, Maka? Let's play together again."
She blinks, surprised. "But I really can't play more than easy songs. I can't keep up with you on the piano."
"Don't worry about it. I have an idea."
She shrugs and straightens up at the bench, ready to begin. His heart swells at how easily she accepts his unexplained plan; she's right, trust does go both ways.
He nods at her to begin and she starts in with a simple rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb, echoes of his style still clinging to the way she moves from key to key. Once she begins the reprise again, Soul begins softly accenting her notes with small trills and complementary chords.
His eyes drift shut as he focuses on her sound, strong, unfaltering, golden, and lets go.
They may not make it into Shibusen, but as Soul wraps his music around hers and feels it deepen in intensity, he knows that they'll face any danger together, and that together they'll overcome.