Maka woke up – it seemed as if her heart has stopped the moment her eyes opened, but then it started beating again as she took deep breaths, her sweat uncomfortable on her skin.

She had to take time to process. Was that a nightmare? The green-eyed meister hadn't had nightmares since the battle with Asura was finished, and she had cried after those nightmares because Crona (her friend) stayed to imprison the Kishin on the moon for who knows how long and everyone had come so close to dying...

Knock-knock-knock.

"Maka?" It was Soul. "We got a phone call from Professor Stein. He says your father was attacked."

The words felt like she was watching her father be obscured from her view because of the black blood all over again.

Spirit Albarn was safe, it turned out. He was in the infirmary because there was simply no more room in the hospital. Someone living in the apartment beside his heard a scream come from his apartment and went to tell the source to shut up, but instead found the Death Scythe, who was bleeding and hardly breathing. Stein happened to be at the hospital and moved him to the Shibusen infirmary.

Maka thought that she shouldn't be crying for her father, who cheated on her mother and made their daughter stop trusting men (until Soul), but in that moment she did. She sobbed harshly. Why? She couldn't point it out.

Kid was there, waiting like the rock his father had always been. He helped Soul calm her down, and when she had calmed down, Stein spoke.

"He'll make a full recovery," the professor told Maka. "You can see him now, but he's not in shape to wake up yet. Don't trouble him too much."

Once again, Soul and Maka went into the infirmary without so much as a word. It was in a more solemn mood than before. Maka thought she needed a painkiller for the headache she had; if only she could return to the place where all was right with the world, but that would never happen.

She exhaled, slowly. Then she held her father's hand, an impulse borne from the same place where her tears came from. Her hand tightened around Spirit's as she became lost in thought. Who would do such a thing without so much as a reason? She couldn't believe it.

Then she thought about Sandy and his dream. How did they know that Spirit was in trouble? How did they know that she was the one to call?

Her mind couldn't just stop at the conclusion that the Guardians – by way of the spectral girl Katherine – knew about her and managed their way into her dreams with their magic. Maka knew now that the Guardians were alive somewhere, somehow, and that Katherine knew a lot more than she let Maka know. But what?

Spirit's hand twitched in hers, a sign of life. Maka looked up at him. His lips were twitching; he was muttering in his sleep. Maka knew, from the nights she spent as a little girl in Mama and Papa's bed due to bad dreams, that he was prone to this.

She looked up at Soul, and found that he was staring. She couldn't tell if the look on his face said that it was time to go, or something else entirely. But whatever it was, the look made Maka want to go. She looked back at her father, and let go of his hand.

"Gold," he said, louder than a mumble, loud enough that both Soul and Maka could hear it. "What?" Soul asked, out of impulse. Maka blinked. Gold...?

"Yellow...cold..." Maka stared intently at him before thinking, what if it was just random mutterings? He had, after all, mumbled about pink pencils in his sleep once when she was four. (It turned out to be what he was getting her for her fifth birthday, complete with a stationary set that she only ever used for letters to her mother when they divorced.)

"...Cold yellow eyes..." his eyebrows creased, but 12 seconds later his face relaxed, and he went on mumbling quietly. Soul raised an eyebrow. "What was that?" he asked. Maka stood up. "It was nothing. Just random mumbling." She turned towards Soul. "Well, do you want to go?"

Maka nodded tiredly, and took his hand before leading them both towards the door. He held her hand, and understood that the pressure she was under might break her – but he was confident that it wouldn't. Maka sensed his tightening hold and hung on to that comfort for a little while.

She was going to find the person who did this, and make them pay, whether it be Pitch or anyone else.

Kid stared, after the two who walked by him, with his golden eyes before suddenly the area behind him seemed a little brighter. He noticed the brightness behind him, and he turned around to see the spectral girl staring at him, and when she realized he saw her, she faltered.

"...You're not Lord Death?" Mother Goose asked. "I mean, I know that you're a Reaper, but you're not who I was looking for..." The shinigami turned to face her completely. "I am the new Lord Death," he explained. "I took the place of my father after he..." he sighed. The storyteller nodded. "I see."

She lifted off the ground, staying afloat before flying around him, examining him. "Funny, I never knew that the previous Reaper had a son," she commented. "Well," Kid looked up at her, "there's a lot of things Father didn't tell people. And I was created from a part of him, so I'm not the typical kind of son you have in mind."*

Katherine's stare lingered a little longer before she exhaled out of her nose. "Sorry for bothering you, Lord Death," she apologized. "I just came here because I wanted to thank your father for saving me back then...during the battle with the Nightmare King and Kishin Asura."

Kid was the one to look her over this time. "You're a Guardian?"

"Yes, I am."

He nodded before looking down, closing his eyes for a moment, and then he opened them again and looked up at her.

"Do you know that Lady Solar is here?"

"She is?" Katherine's eyes widened. "The Woman in the Sun? No, I didn't know."

"Well, she's here." Kid said. "And she told me a theory that I think you need to hear."

Katherine gulped inaudibly, bracing herself. "What did she tell you?"

Maka was sitting in front of their television, staring blankly at a late news show as if it were the dullest thing in the world. Yet she kept staring. What was she looking for? She didn't know what she was looking for, but it was most definitely not sleep. Her mind was too restless.

So much that she didn't even notice Soul come by her until he spoke.

"What're you still doing here, Maka?" he asked, and she flinched at the sudden disturbance, but once she realized it was Soul she relaxed. "I'm not sleepy."

Being so tired that you couldn't sleep. Soul could relate, not that he would admit it. "You worrying about that father of yours?" Maka shook her head. "No." Soul blinked, and looked up at the TV, which was already beginning to show a headline about more children from the countryside going missing. The Death Scythe reached across the coffee table for the remote control, and turned the TV off.

"What are you doing here then?" he asked.

"Thinking," she said, and she thought that it sounded a little defensive. "I just didn't feel like sleeping."

Soul looked at his meister, and then to the blank TV. They both stared in silence for a moment before he stood up and went to his own room. He knew that she would come back to her room before 2:15 AM anyway, and that is what she did. But her mind was still full of activity, and it showed in her sleepless night.

Meanwhile, another person was staring blankly at something – only it wasn't a television set.

Lady Solar sat on one of the many courtyards of Shibusen that overlooked the entire Death City. But she wasn't looking at the city below, for much of it had been reduced to rubble, and it sorely hurt anyone to look at the state of the place now.

Instead, WiS was looking up at the starless sky, at the Moon that was eclipsed by black blood. She stared at it for so long, remembering the time that she had been on that Moon, back when it was still a white circle in the sky. When she saw MiM scream at nothing.

"Why didn't I go over and save him?" she thought, still staring even as she swallowed and found she had a lump in her throat. "Why did I leave him?"

Inhale. Exhale.

If she hadn't left, the Guardians would have taken longer to defeat Pitch and Asura.

But if she had stayed, then she could have saved Tsar Lunar from the madness, and Nightlight...he wouldn't have...

When guilt overwhelms someone, it makes them think (or in most cases, know) that they are the only ones to blame for the problem. This was true for Lady Solar, especially as Pitch's words rang in her head.

"I know what you did that night!"

F

Gulping, she curled in on herself, covering her ears.

E

Why was she so afraid of what Pitch knew?

A

Because she couldn't accept what she had done that night.

R

She had been a coward that night.

And on that same night, the Protectors – her Protectors – had returned to humanity and later died at the hands of kishin eggs. All of them.

Because she was afraid.

Her hands moved from her ears to her face, and soon she released all of her pent-up tears.

(A/N: ...Am I supposed to say "Merry Christmas" for a chapter like this?

* - As much as I would like Kid to have a mother...canon says he doesn't.)

* (Chapter 9) - Sandy doesn't spell out things by letters very often, but I can't find any pictures to describe it perfectly.