Soul Theory
by.
Poisoned Scarlett


.07
thirteen, fourteen, draw the curtain


He finds himself gazing at the ceiling again a few nights later, his sheets tangled around his legs and his shirt skewed from his tossing and turning. The snuffed lamp that sits on his desk beckons for him, along with the papers he knows are placed beneath it haphazardly in his exhaustion. All he needs to do is sharpen his pencil and go back to the composition he's been putting off for Maka lately.

He understands Maka's pain better than she believes he does although he knows that he'll never understand that feeling of paternity you get from another person other than your mother or father. He doubts he'll ever even know that feeling. But he knows that Blair will come back changed, no matter how much he tells her she won't. Soul knows firsthand how a person can change in just under a year. He can only hope Maka won't be too devastated when Blair returns different than the woman she once knew.

At least he'll be there for her when it happens, he thinks with a weary sigh.

His mother and father aren't as loving as the parents of his friends. He found that out when he was in the fifth grade and he couldn't remember when was the last time his father really, truly, hugged him because he could. While his friends parents married for love, his own parents marriage is one of convenience. They don't even share the same bedroom, Soul thinks, they haven't since they conceived two children as was required in their contract. Soul doesn't even think that they had ever tried to make their arranged marriage work: his mother was always off with friends or the sort while his father smoked in the living room and flirted with the maids when he grew bored. When he wasn't, he was working, and thoroughly ignored his sons when he came back tired and yawning.

He only had his brother, Soul thinks dully, and his brother had been the epitome of cool when he was a kid. He was always there for him when he was a child; always there to help him take out the jar of peanut butter from the top shelf in the pantry and always there to ruffle his hair when he scraped his knee outside. But things change. The more his parents expectations had been thrust upon Wes Evans, and the more he began to spend time with his wretched violin than his dear younger sibling, he became something that no longer fit Soul's paradigm of cool.

Soul remembers when Wes was transferred out of the nearby public school and set to study abroad in a prestigious private school whose main focus was bringing out the undeveloped and hidden talents within aspiring musicians – or so his father had often spouted when Soul asked. When Wes had come back a year and a half later, he came back with a haughty, aloof, air. He came back changed; a pathetic shadow of the once sweet, humble, older brother Soul looked up to.

He showed off a skill that Soul only wished he had, knowing that his piano skills were subpar compared to Wes' natural elegance with the stringed instrument. His mother had tried teaching a young Soul different instruments in her anxiety: guitar, saxophone, trumpet, drums, viola, cello. But he excelled even less in those, mainly because he skipped the lessons as he grew bored easily, and he was always lured back by the white and black tabs of the piano kept in the Evans music room - even if he could barely play it.

"What did I tell you about sneaking in here, Soul?" His mother would shriek when she was home, pointing a rigid finger out down the hall. "If your father were to hear about this…!"

"So what? What's he gonna' do? Hit me? I'll call child services!" A snarky thirteen year old lashed back, startling his estranged mother silent. He merely grinned, Soul remembers dryly, and waltzed out as if he had the world held in his hands; capable of crushing it at whim. But he knows one person who can shatter that brash persona of his; one person who unfailingly made him shrink into himself, cast his eyes to the floor and feel unworthy of the regal surname Evans.

"You'll never be able to go to Chetham's with that type of form." Wes would say evenly when he was home those few times, his eyes as sharp and mean as a cats as he watched his brother hunch over the piano self-consciously. "I've heard better pianists from my stay in that school and they're considered the worst."

But this will be his chance, Soul thinks as he pushes away those grim memories, this coming Christmas could be his very last chance to redeem himself! It's too late to attend Chetham's School of Music now, but he can very well admit himself to a prestigious college somewhere in Europe like his parents would have wanted. He can prove his snobby parents wrong, that he isn't doomed for failure, and he can shove his triumphs in his brother's snotty face. He can rise above them – hell, he may even tear the acceptance letter in their faces and let them mourn their own negligence!

Soul snorts at the thought, a slight grin on his face. Like he'd ever get the guts to do that – then all his hard work would be for nothing! The grin disappears soon after, somber with the thought of his current composition. Everything – his name, his life, his cool – depended on those few sheets of music borne from the darkest and dampest reaches of his soul. He was never a good musician, Soul admits, he always had trouble focusing on the music and remembering the notes. He was always too hyper to sit still for longer than five minutes; always too adventurous and naturally mischievous to sit for two hours with some old and bitter tutor droning on and on about the history behind some famous musician who had long since been dead.

He always messed up when he was a kid. He always let this thoughts drift and roam while his tutor taught him the basics. He always ditched his classes. He never did his homework. Then when his mother and father would gather in the den, after two or so months of being absorbed in their own lives, to discuss his progress with the tutor, they'd only be let down and disgusted by his own incompetence.

This was his chance to prove to them that the piano was actually an instrument he could – and has – mastered. This was his chance to prove he did have Evans' blood running through his veins. This Christmas would change everything, Soul thinks sigh a heavy sigh.

How uncool.

"Soul! Wake up! It's time for school!" Maka shouts, throwing his door open and greeting him with that cheerful smile of hers. She wears an apron, a spoon in her hand as she continued to rouse him from his sleep. Soul sits up with a grunt, finally feeling the tiring effects of spending all night simmering in his own broody thoughts.

"It's like seven in the morning! It's too early!" He grumbles, flopping back and burying his face in his pillow while Maka frowns. "Go away..."

"Soul, get up! You have to take me school! You promised!"

"Dammit," Soul mutters, knowing he had. He doesn't have first or second period because they're his home periods, as he had arranged when he first became a Senior. It was graciously wonderful because he could go to school late, getting enough sleep when his thoughts wouldn't let him sleep at night, but with Maka having a packed schedule and now living so far from Shibusen High, someone had to take her…

It would be uncool to have her take two buses to school every day.

"Soul, get… UP!" Maka shouts, tearing the sheets from his body. Soul hisses, the cold air hitting his bare arms directly.

He snaps his head to her: "Hey, give it back! Dammit, Maka!" He watches as she happily skips out of the room, his sheets dragging behind her. Deciding he'd rather not risk getting hit on the head with a book for his disobedience so early in the morning, Soul reluctantly drags himself to the kitchen and finds she had folded his sheets up nicely and laid them on the couch for him to cocoon himself in when he returned home after dropping her off.

He can smell breakfast come from the kitchen, the mouth-watering smell of crisp bacon strips along with a stack of pancakes as Maka had taken to making every morning. Sometimes she switched bacon for egg or pancakes for french toast but she generally stuck with bacon because it was his favourite. He knew she did this for him because she'd get that relieved look in her eye, as if by doing this she was somehow repaying him for sheltering her.

Soul really doesn't mind having her room with him for free. She cleans and cooks awesome meals every day - perhaps he had needed a woman's touch around the house, now that he looks around and notices small, subtle, changes. It didn't seem so empty anymore; it held a sort of cozy warmth with her added presence. He was content with these things, but try telling Maka, who still insisted she pay half the rent, that.

"Is there any coffee?" Soul asks, pulling out a chair.

"Yeah, do you want orange juice, too?" Maka asks, pouring him a cup of steaming coffee as she did. "I finally bought some yesterday!"

"Nah, just make another cup. I'll need two to keep me awake all day." He yawns, drinking the coffee black despite the glass of sugar and cup of milk she placed in front of him. She just sighs and shakes her head at that, earning herself a grin.

Their routine for this is simple: he takes her to school dressed in black sweatpants with his leather jacket thrown over him lazily and returns, falling back on the couch with the blanket thrown over him while he entertains himself with early morning cartoons. Then, when he grows bored of such immaturity, he would shower and change and head on over back to school even if he was early by half an hour.

But there's a reason he doesn't mind being at school early.

He began school with the music teacher, Mr. Law. Although Soul often grew irritated and annoyed when he went off on a tangent with his religious rants, Soul thought he was cool for allowing him to use one of the practice rooms to practice his piano skills while he taught the class. He was graded not by what the assignments his classmates did, but by how much he's improved since the last time Law heard him play; also by how much he'd advanced in his personal composition.

So far, so good. Soul thinks confidently, as he saunters down the shined halls of Shibusen. He idly wonders if Maka is having fun in her advanced calculus class and snickers. She's probably crying over the math being taught – she always kicked him when he teased her about it, finding it funny how she slaved over the homework in order to understand it.

"Tis' almost time, Soul!" Law proclaims the instant he walks into the room. His eyes flicker to the students who stop their noise-making to look at him. "The time of your anticipated concerto draws near!" Law bellows, raising his hands dramatically while Soul drones his greeting and slouches over to one of the sound-proof rooms for his daily practice.

He shuffles out some pages of his composition, sighing heavily as he knows he still has a long way to go. He doesn't have to go this far (memorizing one of Bach's more elaborate pieces would satisfy his parents and silence his haughty brother) but he wants to go above and beyond for once in his life. All his life he'd been nothing but a disappointment in the eyes of his parents, with Wes taking the spotlight without even trying half the time. He was always the under-achiever; the family secret.

It was time he proved his worth, like the cool guy he was.

"Have you almost finished your composition, Soul, the time draws close!" Professor Justin Law delicately asks, peeking into the room.

"Not even half-way through," Soul says, surly. He tosses the teacher his folder, picking on a key idly while Law goes over what he has written thus far.

"Remarkable!" Justin Law exults, continuing his reading while Soul rolls his eyes at his theatrics. "Astonishing!" The man was too over-the-top sometimes. "You must finish, Soul, you cannot stop now! You must continue writing this masterpiece which shall grant you admittance to both any music school around the globe and your families rankings!" He passionately says, springing beside him with a flourish of black robes.

"Yeah, sure." Soul flatly says, snatching his folder from the overly-enthusiastic music teacher whom Soul sorely thinks should have applied as a drama teacher. "How's Maka doing?"

"Fantastic, of course, she has truly improved under your guidance." Law answers with a pleased smile. He leans against the piano, watching his student smile gently at the thought of Maka finally getting a clue about the otherwise simple concept of music. "She got a twenty out of twenty and received full-credit on the short constructed response."

"Which was about...?"

"The inner workings of music and how it may improve ones own life," Law vaguely says, and Soul snorts.

"You're unbelievable, man."

"Not unbelievable! Unconventional," Law cleverly says, and Soul outright laughs at his professors remark. After a moment or two of thought, watching his young student tinker around with the keys of the piano in the room with a much more relaxed air than usual, Law says: "I have noticed a change in you."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes. You're much more talkative now, and you're much more receptive to my advice than before. Could it be because the date of your concert is nearing?" Law inquires, but when a flash of boredom catches his eyes, he knows he's wrong and changes tactics: "Or could it be that the young Miss Maka Albarn has managed to thaw the hardest of hearts?"

"What?" Soul frowns, eying his teacher warily. "Stop talking like you're in the friggin' eighteenth century and spit it out already!"

Law huffs but says, "I meant have you got a crush on the girl, Soul, honestly, it's not that hard to understand!"

"A crush—? You gotta' be kidding me. Do I look love-struck to you?" Soul spits back, glaring when his professor hums skeptically. "Shut up, I don't."

"Well, you do smile an awful lot when her name is brought up—!"

"I'm not." Soul hisses.

"Fret not, Soul, for the heart knows no bounds once it has been pierced by Cupids arrow—!"

"Get the hell out! I have to finish another line before I get out today!" Soul snaps, kicking out his music teacher before he can spout anymore nonsense. He leans against the door when his professor tries to enter again, shouting something about Soul needing to put those passionate emotions to good use and integrate them in his composition. His teacher could be totally uncool when he wanted to be, Soul breaths out and drops himself back on the piano bench. He knows he needs to finish at least another line in his composition before today ends but he doesn't quite know where to go now.

He's had a writers block for days and it's wearing on him. Not to mention he's been distracted by Maka's presence in his usually silent home. He likes prodding her from her book: she was always fun when she bristled like a cat. He also likes disturbing her from her homework, scaring her with horror movies at night, and taking samples of her cooking when she wasn't looking. He finds himself chuckling at the thoughts and then it dies in his throat. His eyes dart to the door, to where he can vaguely hear Justin Law practically sing to his students that they'd warm up with a simple song today.

Soul's elbows hit the keys flatly, fingers rubbing out his eyes.

A crush on Maka, huh? He thinks wryly to himself, looking at his sloppily-written sheets. He never really thought about it that way. It makes it out like something superfluous and temporary when phrased like that and he doesn't like it. He thinks what he has towards Maka is, maybe, a little more intense than that, with more conscious affection than blind infatuation.

But Law was onto something when he said to incorporate those stifled affections into his composition...

He wonders how that will disrupt the rather melancholic and taunting intro he already finalized. He toys with the idea, trying it out on the piano before him for a few minutes, and realizes something as he stops and quickly writes down the notes before he forgets him.

Maka may just be the inspiration he needs to finish this and finally earn his title as a member of the prestigious Evans family.


Maka marches down the glossed halls of Shibusen with fire crackling in her eyes. She clutches her phone in her hand, a growl rising up her throat at the thought of Soul. He was so dead when she found him! He promised to be outside when she came out of school but it's been fifteen minutes and he still hadn't shown his face! She knew he was still in school because his motorcycle was parked out in the student parking lot but Maka had a lot of homework to finish and she needed to study for a test! Not to mention she'll be late for her job at the cafe at this rate! Meaning they needed to leave now, not two hours later!

"Soul!" Maka snarls, slamming the door to the music room open. "Soul, where are you?"

"Ah, Maka!" Law cheerfully greets, looking up from arranging a few books back into their crates. "What a pleasant surprise! He's in the room practicing right now."

"Still?" Maka gapes, in disbelief. "Ugh, why doesn't he just take that thing home with him!"

"If he did that, he'd never come to school." Law jokes, laughing when Maka cringes at the thought of missing school so much. "He has been in that room all day. He went out to excuse himself from his classes in the morning. I believe he's onto something and he does not want to lose that inspiration."

"Is that composition of his really that important?" Maka asks, exasperated. "What's it for, anyway?"

"He hasn't told you?" Law asks, curiously. His strange expression makes Maka lose some of her temper at her snowy-haired roommate. "He's working so hard on that composition because on Christmas Eve he will be playing in front of all of his family members to redeem himself."

"Redeem himself...?" Maka repeats softly, confused. She feels irritation replace with curiosity. "What do you mean by that? What did Soul do that's so bad he has to redeem himself by doing this?"

"Well," Law hums, thoughtful. "He neglected his studies at a young age. As you know, Soul's family is internationally known for their talent in music. There hasn't been a single son or daughter in the Evans family who hasn't been noted for their mastery in a certain instrument."

"So Soul…" Maka starts, as she pieces together what happened when he was younger. She doesn't comment but she didn't know that Soul came from such a famous lineage. Perhaps that's why he could afford so many things: his family was actually wealthy, like she had first thought. "Soul didn't learn like the others?"

"He neglected to learn any instrument properly when he was younger."

"What? But he – I've heard him play the guitar before! He's really good at it! He memorized a song I asked him to play once in half a day! Doesn't that count for anything?" Maka argues, unable to believe that someone whom she revered so much for his talent in all things music was considered mediocre in others eyes.

Law smiles, faintly. "Have you ever heard him play the piano?"

"Well, no..."

"He was horrible at first." Law states, reminiscing on those days. "I couldn't believe he was an Evans when he came to me. But he proved he does belong in that family. In just two months, he was already being grouped in my honors class, and a few weeks after that I began to privately tutor him because he was ahead of the class."

Maka smiles at that, feeling something similar to pride swell in her chest at the thought of her otherwise lazy roommate trying so hard. It's probably the hardest she'll ever seen him work for something, she inwardly thinks.

"The prestige of his family depends on the success of this concert," Law explains, sobering instantly. Maka's own smile falters. "If he fails… then he'll be the first Evans to ever be known as musically incompetent. It'll completely sully his families strong reputation, and likely cement his disownment from the family. He's already in danger of having his name stripped from him..."

Such a heavy expectation, Maka thinks to herself in concern, with so much responsibility being strapped onto his shoulders. She wishes she could help him somehow but knows she's pretty much useless. There isn't anything she can do but hope he won't slack off midway. After a few seconds of silence, both able to faintly hear the sounds of piano tabs being tapped from within the small room, Maka says: "He can do it." With more confidence, adds: "I know Soul can do it."

"I do, too." Law smiles, faithfully. "Especially since he might as well have finished it by now."

"How do you know he has?" Maka asks, curious.

"I have a feeling." Law smiles a secretive smile, clapping his hands and successfully distracting her from her thoughts. "Now, for what reasons have you come to seek Soul out? Could it be your heart yearns to be close to his passionate visage?" He laughs boisterously when Maka pales and subsequently flushes red. "Ahah! Young love!"

"I'm leaving now, Mr. Law." Maka deadpans, turning away to hide her warm face from his mirthful eyes. "Tell Soul that I'll meet him at the house when he finishes and it's his turn to buy dinner."

"Of course – wait, dinner? House?" Law squawks, wide-eyed. But Maka has already left the room, heading down the hall and leaving the theatrical music teacher thoroughly floored with her revelation.

Later on that night, Soul would glare holes at Maka for leaving him to deal with the aftermath of such a huge statement.