Noun; Defined as twilight and dusk, gloaming symbolizes the day's end, the glittery, transient echo when time and nature meet.

Halloween

A throbbing headache tows Maka out of her dream while sunlight prods her into waking. Grumbling, she hoists her blankets over her head and hisses when she feels shooting pain light in her palms.

"Are you awake?"

"No." She ignores the pain and buries her face in her pillow.

"It sounds like you are."

She throws back the covers and gives Soul a half-hearted glare. "What do you want?"

A jar of antibiotic cream and a roll of bandages floats up in front of him in silent answer.

Pulling a face, Maka sits up and finds most of the bandages Spirit had decorated her with last night have fallen off. Spirit hadn't looked convinced by the story that she had gone to the park after Hiro ditched her and made an unwise leap at the peak of her swinging, but he'd been more preoccupied with the cuts and scrapes dotting her body to question her further.

She uncaps the jar and begins to apply it to the cuts that hurt the most while Soul unwraps the bandages. "How did you get these in here?" she asks, glancing at her closed door-Soul's dubious control over his telepathy hasn't evolved enough yet to twist open doorknobs.

"Your father left them on your dresser." A lone bandage floats to her and she takes it.

"And where is he now?"

"He got a call and went out a while ago," Soul answers. "Left a note saying he'd be back for dinner."

"So long as he's not trying to hunt down Hiro," Maka mutters. She didn't need to be labeled as the daughter of that cop just yet.

Soul's voice is serious. "Actually, I think that's was the call was about."

She looks up in alarm and then she sees the expression on his face.

Her pillow sails through him, knocking the roll of bandages out of the air and just underneath the bed. "Hey!"

"Not so funny now," Maka says evenly, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and wincing as she flexes her feet. She and Soul reach for the bandages at the same time-Maka beats him to the roll just barely and straightens with a victorious smile. Her gloat dies in her throat as she finds Soul much closer to her than she thought with his outstretched fingers an inch away from hers.

The temptation to close the distance flares as Soul withdraws his hand and drifts to her other side of the bed, gesturing to the pile of bandages next to her. "Those should be enough, right?"

"Right." Something like disappointment sounds in her chest and Maka returns to placing bandages on her cuts, fingers moving clumsily. The scrapes spanning across her knees and palms don't hurt much although the peculiar fatigue from last night hasn't fully dissipated, still heavy in her bones. It had done strange things to her: she vaguely remembers words that couldn't stop gushing from her mouth as Soul led her home and Maka prays she had kept some sort of filter on whatever she'd said.

Her teeth grit in frustration as her fingers refuse to cooperate and the bandage around her right hand slips off for the third time.

"Need help?"

It is almost embarrassing how quickly she holds out her hand but she is too emotionally spent from yesterday to feel any shame. "Please."

Maka scoots her pillows out of the way to make more room for Soul before she realizes it's unnecessary.

Soul snorts as he takes the bandage and begins to wrap it carefully around her palm. "Is it that easy for you to forget?"

"I did grow up with ghosts." The ease of which her words come out feels unnatural but they no longer sting with the bitterness of melancholy. "They felt a lot more alive than some people."

"Did I tell you anything about them?" she asks after a pause. "From last night?"

"You talked about them a bit." His eyes flick up to hers. "A lot."

"Oh." She wiggles her fingers as Soul finishes wrapping the bandage. "How much did you understand?"

"I got the gist of it." He floats back slightly, still gazing at her face. "I'm sorry."

Maka's throat tightens; tears prick in the corner of her eyes but the hurt that has been suffocating her for the past four years is fragmented and when she inhales, she can feel something more than her pain.

She brushes away the tears tracking down her face. "I miss them."

"You can cry." A box of tissues nudges the unbandaged part of her hand as Soul takes up the spot next to her. "It's okay."

She accepts the tissues and for a long time, there is no other noise in the room but the sound of Maka's quiet, broken breathing. She sniffles and hiccups twice as her tears begin to slow, crumpling the tissue in her hand.

"So, the other thing from last night," she begins once she's sure she is done crying. "The possession," she clarifies when Soul doesn't answer.

The lax slouch of Soul's shoulder is replaced by a rigid tension. "I know what you meant."

"I didn't think possession would feel so-" Maka searches for the word. "Thrilling."

Soul blinks, raising his eyebrows. "Thrilling?"

Maka suddenly doubts whether Soul felt the same harmony flowing between them that she had and scrambles for something else to say. "Well, it was a life-or-death situation. For me, at least."

Soul laughs once at that but it sounds forced. "It was different, that's for sure."

"Let's try it again," Maka suggests eagerly. She stands up, reaching out for his hand. "All it took was us overlapping ri-"

"No!" Soul nearly flies back through the ceiling.

She jumps in alarm from how fast Soul retreats. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he answers, although his expression says otherwise. Soul peels himself away from the ceiling but he stays out of reach. "I just don't want to do it."

"Why not? Imagine all the good we could do," Maka rejoins. "Imagine if we could clear out all of the poltergeists."

Soul hovers slightly closer. ""It's a nice thought but we can't," he says. "I can't."

Maka frowns. "Why? What do you mean?"

"I felt it." Soul's gaze moves everywhere, except to Maka. "Whatever you were doing to that demon," he says. "And it hurt."

"It hurt?"

"Not much," he adds quickly, eyes meeting hers briefly.

Maka studies at Soul. He is desperately trying to be nonchalant, but his panic makes itself apparent through the chill in her hand. "It doesn't mean what you think it means."

"I didn't say it meant anything," he mutters.

"No, but you thought it," she replies. "You are nothing like that demon," she says, moving to her closet. "And we're going to prove it."

"How?"

She pulls a pair of pants from her closet. "You'll see." Turning back to him, Maka asks, "Can you give me some privacy?"

"Oh, right." He's still looking anywhere but at her though his voice sounds embarrassed now. "I'll be in the truck."

Maka dresses briskly, grabbing a granola bar from the kitchen to soothe her grumbling stomach as she jots a note to Spirit and leaves the house. The wind is sharp and freezing although the sun is shining down; she blows on her hands as she enters the truck, turning the key in the ignition eagerly.

Soul is waiting in the passenger seat. "Now will you tell me?" he asks.

She pulls carefully down the driveway. "Nope."

"That's unfair."

"Think of it as practice in patience."

The drive to the cemetery is short and Maka hears Soul's small intake as she turns into the road leading in between the carefully watched over graves.

She looks over at him as she parks and turns off the car. "Do you think you'd know your name if you saw it?"

Soul gives her a once over and she knows he's checking to see if she's really okay with this. Then he nods.

"Then we'll find you," Maka says simply.

Maka squints at the faded name on the headstone, brushing away some of the dirt covering the stone. "Is your name...Johann Eisanburg?"

He snorts. "That is the most unfortunate name I have ever heard of."

"So it's yours then."

"And also nowhere near Soul."

She wipes the dirt off her hands. "Nicknames don't have to make sense."

"Somehow I'm still thinking that's not me," he says, rising up. Soul sighs. "How many more do we have to go?"

"This cemetery is filled with over two hundred years' worth of dead people," Maka answers, standing as well. "So I'm guessing a lot more." She stretches and glances at the darkening sky, shaking out the soreness in her legs. "We'll have to save them for tomorrow though."

"Fun." Soul casts a dark look in the direction of the group of ghosts peering at him from beyond a particularly large gravestone. His appearance seems to simultaneously fascinate and terrify the ghosts who dwelled in the cemetery; all of the ghosts had followed Soul at a careful distance initially, paying little attention to Maka, although now the only ghosts who linger are teenagers and small children.

There's an increase in their hushed babble and a few high-pitched giggles as Soul glares at them before they scatter, disappearing into the air.

A smile twitches on Maka's lips. "You're popular."

"Don't."

"You should try talking to them," she continues as they head back to the truck. "They think you're cool."

"They think I'm weird," he corrects, slipping through the truck to his place in the passenger seat. "They'd run away if I tried talking to them." He throws away the words as if they mean nothing, but they carry a resignation that stretches farther back than the time they've been together.

Maka slides into her seat. "I didn't run away when I met you." She gives him a sidelong look as the engine roars to life. "And I think you're cool occasionally."

Soul is quiet and then he scoffs. "Only occasionally?"

"You forfeited 'all the time' when you woke me up to rant about the Fox and the Hound."

"It was a sad movie!"

"It was also midnight."

Soul rolls his eyes but the pensive melancholy on his face is gone. "Let's play a game," he says after a moment.

"A game?" Maka scrunches her eyes against the blinding glare of the setting sun. "What kind?"

"The true or false kind."

The suggestion is strange for Soul but she accepts it without questioning it. "Okay, you start then."

"You think I'm cool."

"I just told you that!" She doesn't need to look at him to feel the smugness radiating off him.

"You can only answer with true or false."

She purses her lips together to keep the amusement off her face. "Fine, true."

Soul sounds overly pleased with himself. "Thank you."

"My turn," Maka says with a determined air. "You're the one who put the color with my dad's white shirts."

"That was months ago," he says defensively. "Why does it matter?"

She shakes her head. "True or false answers only, remember?"

"True," Soul finally admits. "But I had no idea how laundry worked then."

"I knew it," Maka declares victoriously, jabbing a finger in his direction. "And you kept on saying it was me."

"I was trying to help."

"My dad's pink shirts thank you." She glances over at him. "And since you had me confess you're cool twice, that means I get another question."

He laughs. "Fine."

Maka keeps her eyes trained on the road as she speaks. "You're angry at me for ignoring you."

Silence descends in the truck. "True and false," Soul says finally. "I was angry in the beginning," he continues. "Then, I was confused." His voice takes on the keen discomfort of someone who never speaks their feelings. "And then I was hurt."

It parallels too closely for Maka not to make the realization: she had become the one who left instead of the one who was left behind. "I'm sorry," she says.

She takes a breath. "I overreacted in the swamp." She swallows. "I thought I was protecting myself from being left behind again."

Her gaze slides to Soul. "But I just hurt you."

"I'm sorry," she says again.

He is quiet for a long time. "You don't have to worry about me leaving."

His words and silent acceptance of her apology makes her throat grow tight. "Okay."

The grin in his voice is loud. "All right."

He and Maka go back to their game for the rest of the ride home, keeping their following questions light and teasing, but it's as Maka parks that a real question crops up in her mind. Instantly, a flush burns across her face and her heartbeat turns into a single unceasing roar. She craves the answer as much as she dreads it, and now that it's occurred to her, there is no way Maka can't ask, but still her mouth runs dry and her stomach flips in knots, hands turning clammy.

She is acutely aware of everything as they exit the truck and walk towards the porch, of the dying orange painted across the sky, of the evening air's crisp taste on her tongue, of the closeness between her hand and Soul's.

Tension winds in Maka's muscles and threatens to choke her words but she takes a deep breath and pauses on the porch. It's something she has to settle or the doubt lying dormant in her mind will come back to life again.

"Last question," Maka says as she turns to Soul, cutting off whatever he had been in the middle of saying.

Confusion crosses his face and then Soul closes his mouth, looking at her expectantly.

Her breathing is nonexistent, her skin is on fire and her heartbeat pounds in her fingertips but she focuses on the red of Soul's eyes, softened into burgundy in the fading light, and nothing else.

The words come out with less conviction than she envisioned. "You want to stay."

Soul's expression goes blank before filling with an emotion she's never seen on him.

Something pounces from on top of the porch light. Maka lets out a cry of surprise as it lands on her shoulder and flings her hands up to rip it off when she recognizes the small soft ball of fur squirming furiously in her grip.

Purple paws bat at the air in front of Maka's face as she adjusts her grasp. "You!" she exclaims. "Where have you been?"

Beyond her, Soul asks, "Who is this?"

"This is the infamous cat I've been telling you about." She holds the writhing cat out to him. "Isn't she lovely?"

The cat is desperate to be free, swiping at Maka's arms. "And energetic," she adds.

The longer Soul stares at the cat, the more dumbfounded his expression becomes. After a moment of silence, he lifts a shaking finger, pointing it at the animal. "I know this cat."

"Really?" Maka frowns. "Have you seen her around the house before?"

"Before that," Soul chokes out. He looks paler than usual, if that were possible. "This cat was with me the night I died."

"You remember me!" The cat stops floundering in Maka's hands and begins to purr. Her golden eyes fix on Soul. "It's been a long time, ghost boy."