Author Note: Last part is here, warning for major character dearth
March 1st
Soul sat on the edge of Maka's bed holding a portable DVD player and her hand. Spirit sat in the chair next to the bed with his head slumped down in accidental sleep. Maka's eyes weren't even open to watch the movie, but she was breathing softly still - Soul had to keep checking to make sure, and she'd whisper that he was being paranoid.
They had all reached a sort of peace with the heart rate monitor beeping gently in the background. It brought good news for the moment. Soul didn't even know what movie they were watching anymore; he was too focused on her vital signs. They weren't good, but they were there.
"I'm glad you're here." He wasn't completely sure he heard anything at all, but her lips were moving so she must have said something.
"Of course I'm here." He tugged his hat firmly down over her ears. "I always will be."
"I'm sorry I won't."
"Hey." He rubbed her fingers gently, afraid they might break. "Don't apologize, it's not your fault."
"I'm sorry I'm leaving you though." Her voice trembled. "I'm glad we had this time together though, all of it."
"Me too, you know I-"
"Don't."
"Damn." He bumped her shoulder as gently as he could. "I thought I could slip it in that time."
A ghost of a smile quivers at one side of her lips, almost to faint to recognize. "I told you I didn't want you to, didn't I?"
"Maybe I didn't want to read it either," he muttered in response.
"That was your own fault."
"I will miss you though, whether you want me to or not." Her eyes finally flickered open for a second. He took the opportunity to drink in the color before they shut again. "I'll miss you like a limb."
Her response doesn't come so he took comfort in her heart rate. It was still there; she was still alive.
Each beep could have been the last, but the finality still surprised him. He was counting, four four musical time. The measure ended on the third beat, never resolved. Spirit's head jerked up from the bed at the sound of silence.
Spirit's chair screeched across the floor, filling the emptiness. "Maka, baby?"
The response never came.
"Maka, hey." Soul tightened his grip on her hand. He wanted to wake her, could surely wake her if he held on tightly enough. "Hey, I love you, tell me not to say it dammit. Tell me one more time!" He didn't care that he was yelling; he wanted to wake the dead after all.
Two nurses rushed in to shatter his sense of denial; their invasion of sacred ground keeps them from pretending that nothing is different. Nothing looks different. If he looks hard enough, he could almost imagine she was still breathing.
They marked her time of death and asked Spirit to sign as a witness. It was too fast, too clinical. Spirit rushed him out of the room with toneless words about how they'll say goodbye at the funeral.
When Spirit leaned over to buckle Soul's seatbelt for him, the bicycle in front of the hospital doesn't cross either of their minds. It was an odd sort of situation, the father and the boyfriend of a dead girl, in the car with no particular destination. They ended up back at Spirit's house by way of muscle memory more than anything else. Soul didn't even think about the fact that he had no way of getting home. This was where he was supposed to be, wasn't it?
The sight of the spotless kitchen surprised him and an overwhelming flashback overtook.
If he had a choice in the matter, Soul would have spent the days full time in the hospital with Maka. But he was still in school, and Maka had threatened him with violence if he dared skip or fail any classes. He took her threat seriously for posterity, even when she didn't carry the same weight as before. When his middle name was involved, there would be very real consequences.
Class came first, then cleaning came after. Maka liked having a clean kitchen, so he cleaned it in her place. He even took pictures to show her his exploits, but she adamant that she would admire in person when she came home.
The plate in his hand was close to sparkling. The sound it made when it hit the ground sounded like sparkling too. The first one was an accident - the second was not.
"Soul, stop." Spirit sounded so defeated, not nearly as angry as Soul might have hoped. Maka would have been much angrier, maybe she'd have hit him with a book for good measure.
Not dead. Not dead. Not dead.
He needed some reassurance to fuel his mantra interspersed with the crash of dishes. A voice that was definitely not the wanted to hear was calling for him.
"Soul, you can't bring her back." The next plate is snatched out of his hand. "No one can."
Foreign hands, Spirit's hands, gripped his shoulders and shook him. Repetition on repetition, they reminded each other what had happened while neither one truly believed the other.
Soul quaked. Nothing had ever been normal.
Soul remembered very distinctly the last time he had cried. He used to cry a lot as a child. A sensitive boy, his mom has said, before some kind of macho bravado settled in and stole his feelings. It was about time for eight years of repression to break down.
It was catharsis, really.
"Damn it all." His words were broken. He sobbed - without Maka there was no reason to pretend anymore.
Spirit just rubbed his shoulders awkwardly and mumbled placations. "I know, I know."
He did know, after all. Spirit had lost Maka too, along with his own wife. The Ex-Mrs. Albarn was as good as dead to them, not even present for Maka's last breath.
It wasn't fair to any of them. Soul made to sure to repeat this, a new mantra to replace the fallacy of his old one. At some point he crumbled, splayed his knees in the broken ceramic. Spirit joined him on the floor without question.
After the funeral he would stare at her handwriting. His friends tried to say that reading her letter over and over wasn't going to help, wasn't going to let him move on. They didn't know that that wasn't the goal. Soul was on a mission to never forget her voice, the way she talked, and the way she wrote.
Spirit barely wanted to look at her pictures anymore, said he was tempted to get rid of them, but Soul hoarded all the things he could get his hands on. He took Spirit's denial as an opportunity. He had been given free range of organizing boxes, which turned up a tape of their eighth grade spelling bee, with beaming Maka Albarn knocking rival nerd Ox out of the water. He very clearly remembered making fun of her for being a nerd before buying her icecream.
He ended the day with one more read through of the only words that had any meaning for him. Don't miss me, she had written. He wanted more than anything to make her happy, but motivation to keep his promises left when she wasn't there to be disappointed in him. Drowning in her memory was preferable to floating by without it.
