Cicatrix [sik-uh-triks] noun. 1: New tissue forming over a wound and later forming a scar. 2: A scar left behind by a fallen leaf, seed, etc.
Tsubaki wasn't easily surprised, not after all the mad and impossible things she'd seen in her years, but when Soul came literally crashing through his trailer's door to land nearly on top of her, followed by a stunningly accurate barrage of what seemed to be books, all aimed at his forehead, she was definitely a little startled.
"Maka, stop it, I'm sorry!" Thunk, and he took a hardcover right between the eyes. Tsubaki winced. "Fuck, oh Christ--" Thunk!
Maka came hurtling out of the trailer after him, brandishing yet another book, and the tears in her eyes made Tsubaki suddenly aware that this was no ordinary scuffle between the two. She waffled, frozen, wanting to run and horrified by her inadvertent intrusion onto something so private, but stuck in place by the suspicion that Maka was about to need a friend. "You liar," Maka choked, clenched fists trembling. "You dirty no-good liar!"
Yes. She'd definitely need some girl time after this.
Soul scuttled backwards, not even bothering to look at Tsubaki, but she noticed he was very careful to avoid the books scattered across the ground. "I didn't have a choice! It was before I really knew you and by the time I did, I didn't want you to be pissed at me!" he roared.
Maka slit her eyes at him and spat furiously, "You had my diary! This whole time! And you just acted like you didn't know any better than I did, like you were just following Lord Death's orders, like you were innocent! You made me look like a such a fool!"
"I was following orders! What the hell did you expect me to do?" he bellowed wildly. Tsubaki took a prudent step back and was about to turn tail and escape, but then Maka blew by, fists pressed against her eyes, and disappeared to the other side of the train. Her footsteps crunched unevenly against the gravel, very fast, and before she left earshot it was clear she'd begun to run.
"What was that about?" Tsubaki said gingerly. Soul blinked helplessly after Maka, mouth open, and for a moment he looked so peculiarly normal that Tsubaki barely recognized him.
He wasn't the old, familiar demon at that moment. He was just a boy, confused and, judging by the look in his eyes, possibly more than a little heartbroken. "She- augh- nothing! Just goddamn go after her already, will you? Do something useful now that you're not crippled," he said roughly. He started gathering up all the books with astonishing gentleness, grinding his teeth so hard all the while that Tsubaki could clearly hear it where she stood, dumbstruck, a few feet away.
"All right…" she said at last.
"She'll tell you anyway," he muttered. "I don't wanna talk about it." He stopped to stare at one of the books, small and bound in deep forest green, then thrust it towards Tsubaki. "Here, give her this, it's the whole damn problem anyway! Stupid fucking thing."
"Oh- okay." Tsubaki took another moment to stare at the strange, downtrodden person who'd replaced the snarling Soul she knew. He didn't become any more familiar, so she slunk away, reminded terribly of her brother, as she usually was when Soul got into one of his moods. It was something about the eyes, she thought.
She'd figured Maka would be in their trailer, so there she went, and Maka was indeed curled up on the bed, shoulders shaking pathetically and a pillow smooshed over her head. The poor girl was the definition of misery- or at least, would have been, if Tsubaki hadn't just seen the infamous Soul Eater scrabbling pitifully in the dirt, playing librarian.
Tsubaki settled beside Maka and started stroking her hair, flicking out a few stray pieces of grass as she went, trying to decide what on earth she could possibly say to help. Maka and Soul had come so very, very far, and the funny thing was that neither of them really seemed to realize it, even when it all stood to come crashing down. That thought led Tsubaki to think about the cruelty of Jacqueline's cards, and their rattlesnake clamor was loud in her memory.
It wasn't fair, really, none of it was, and it made Tsubaki quietly, futilely angry. Maka was such a loving, kind girl in her own prickly way, so devoted and open-hearted, and yet it seemed like ever since Tsubaki had met her, a steady pile of new and awful things had been growing on her shoulders. The universe hadn't granted Maka a kind path to walk, had taken advantage of her strong steady steps to give her all she could bear and then some, and the worst of it was that the hardest part was yet to come. It wasn't even over yet, and already Maka was burning up from the inside out. .
A month was such a short time, and Tsubaki moved her hand to rub circles in Maka's tense back, thinking about the long, fearful dark of last year's midsummer's night. She and Black Star had sat with the others, crowded in one desperate mass within a defensive circle made from the wagons, and the only light had been from Marie's searchlight eye and a puny bonfire. No one had slept a wink. They'd sat until morning, every hand clutching a weapon, and listened to the dreadful, hungry chatter of the monsters prowling beyond the edge of the firelight and the clamor of the terrified livestock. It had felt like twenty nights, and if there was so much worse coming, well… Tsubaki decided grimly that she'd better sharpen her blade and Maka's scythe too. Like a baby bird's, Maka's shoulders were bony and restless under her palm, but after a bit, they stopped trembling.
"Would you like to talk about it?" she settled on eventually, ignoring the bridle she should be mending, the three different colors of horse hair plastering her trousers, the saddlepad she should be cleaning, and all the other innumerable chores that she'd planned to spend her evening on. Friends were much more important, especially ones under the stress Maka was. Maka shook her head furiously beneath the shield of the pillow. "Do you want me to stay?"
"Yes please," Maka squeaked miserably.
"Okay," Tsubaki murmured, glad she could do something. For a while she sat patiently, petting Maka and cooing the sort of wordless nonsense that she usually used on the horses during thunderstorms, until the train lurched into motion and languid, late afternoon sun jumped through the window.
"I may or may not have overreacted. Slightly," Maka said after a long time, peeking out from under the pillow with a weary eye.
"You've been dealing with a lot lately. It's understandable. I'm guessing that diary you were screaming about was in your bag?" Maka squinted. "Black Star told me about it, your bag that he fetched for you, and the first times he met you, now that he's gotten his memories back," Tsubaki explained.
"Oh." Maka mulled that over, emerging a little more from the pillow. "Soul told me once that I hit him in the face?"
Tsubaki burst out laughing at that, despite herself. "Oh! Yes, you did, Black Star told me. He said it was the funniest thing ever. I think forgetting that was half the reason he was so angry with Lord Death. And this is for you." Now that Maka was more stable, Tsubaki leaned over to snag the little green book Soul had given her and hand it over.
Maka took it gingerly, turned it over and over in her hands, and then licked her thumb to scrub at some dirt on the cover. "I threw it. And it was so important to the old me..."
"The old- You're still you, Maka."
Maka's face went so slack and dead that Tsubaki flinched, and her peacock folded his tail and hung his head low. "I'm not, not at all. Look at this." Maka sat up, a little stiffly, and opened the diary to show Tsubaki a crinkled photograph carefully pasted to the inside of the cover. The age of the photo didn't diminish the allure of the subject in the least. It was a beautiful woman, with hair so fair that, in the picture's greyscale, it swirled around her face in almost white locks. She was smiling impishly, and she was so devastatingly gorgeous that she could have shown up on the silver screen in furs and silks without anyone in the audience being any the wiser.
"She's beautiful," Tsubaki offered automatically. It was clear that this woman was Maka's mother. Her blood had shown up in clearly Maka's incandescent smile and her wide almond eyes.
"I know." Maka squinted at the diary. "Black Star told you that I didn't accept my memories back, didn't he?"
"Yes." Tsubaki would freely admit to some fairly severe curiosity on that point. Her peacock perked up again slightly, peering out with a bright eye from where he sat nestled among her morning glories. "I'm not sure I understand why you said no, though."
Maka sighed and closed the book, settling it with exquisite care onto her lap and running her fingertips over the cover like one would stroke a cat. "How am I supposed to save Soul from Jacqueline's prophecy in a month if I'm terrified that my mother and father are an ocean away, dying? I'm not strong enough. I can only handle being so much of a hero." She grimaced. "That sounds so silly. But it's true. I can't save everyone." She said the last in a bitter, hollow tone, quite as if she thought she were the worst person in the world.
Tsubaki thought about it, carding her fingers through the end of her ponytail slowly. To be honest, she felt more than a little out of her depth, dealing with a relationship between two such people as fiery Maka and bitter, half-monster Soul. It wasn't the kind of thing she understood well enough to feel confident in giving advice on. She and Black Star were undoubtedly monsters in their own right, true, but of a different sort, and anyway they'd fallen together so easily and strongly that it had been as inevitable as the sun rising. They'd never clashed quite the way Soul and Maka did daily, and Tsubaki had never been informed she might have to kill him. Even imagining it made her sick.
Suddenly Tsubaki felt silly and useless, and when she met Maka's sore, pink-edged eyes, the feeling intensified. Rather than saying what she wanted, which was along the lines of, "I wish I could save you from this," because independent Maka probably wouldn't appreciate it, Tsubaki asked, trying to comprehend, "You didn't want to remember your parents?"
Maka shrugged. "I was afraid that if I did, I'd leave Soul." With those words, she flung herself back down on the bed again, sinking into Tsubaki's lush blankets until she was half buried.
Tsubaki yanked her upright again and began to comb her hair, deciding that she'd force comfort somehow onto her friend, whether she liked it or not. Maka bore it patiently enough, and Tsubaki's tiger crept forward onto her wrist, clambering through the morning glories and snarling the peacock away, to watch the golden strands untangle at closer range. "He looked rather upset when I left," Tsubaki said at last, in one of the bigger understatements of her life.
"I overreacted," Maka admitted again. Tsubaki thought her very mature at that moment; it brought up a wave of nostalgic emotions for the bleary-eyed little waif who'd woken up without a name in this same bed. Maka sighed and pulled her knees up to her chest, sinking her forehead into them. "I understand why he did it, I do. It's not a diary in the traditional sense, anyway, he says it's just words. Random little notes. It wouldn't have told me much at all even if he'd given it to me weeks ago, and once we were friends, of course he wouldn't want to risk making me angry. I shouldn't've shouted at him, especially after the day he had." Then she stiffened. "Horsefeathers! Is that the only diary he gave you?"
"You have... more than one?" Tsubaki said, confused. Although, considering Maka's rabid obsession with books, maybe multiple diaries wasn't so farfetched.
"No. He's had mine since I joined. The other one is my- someone else's. I guess he's still got it. Don't, uh, don't mention it to anyone, though, please?" Maka reflected silently for a moment, then said wearily, "I'm going to have to go apologize." Then she mumbled something into her knees that sounded oddly like, "Lemonade."
"Well, we're moving now, so unless you want to pretend you're Black Star and go running along the tops of the cars, it'll have to wait," Tsubaki said practically, sectioning out Maka's hair so she could plait it. Vaguely she realized that perhaps a few too many of her comfort strategies came from things she did with her horses.
Maka put her face back down and breathed, steady and slow, to the rhythm of the train. Tsubaki wound the other girl's hair into a neat french braid and, on a whim that certainly had nothing to do with the bows she always put on her horses, tied the end with a length of green ribbon. "There. You're a vision."
"I am glad I came here, you know, in spite of everything," Maka mumbled awkwardly, touching her hair carefully.
Tsubaki smiled and patted Maka's shoulder. "I'm glad we're friends too."
"Friends…" Suddenly Maka looked as if she'd swallowed a lemon whole. At Tsubaki's questioning look, she said miserably, flapping her hands, "Soul's sort of my best friend. Somehow. I don't know when it happened, but- he's just so mean for a best friend! And sarcastic, and rude, and violent…"
Tsubaki smothered her giggle against the back of her hand and pointed out, "You're fairly violent yourself."
Maka shrugged and flopped over despairingly, apparently giving up on consciousness for the moment. She looked positively wrung out, poor little bunny. Tsubaki patted her again and got up, rummaging for her sewing kit and settling her torn saddle pad onto her lap. Let Maka ruminate and stew over trivial things; right now she was safe, and Tsubaki resolved to be content with that. The dark days were coming far too quickly, and if the Dire Circus had taught her anything, it was that the good times had to be enjoyed while they lasted.
He recognized her knock immediately, and for a long moment, he debated even opening his door at all. He really, really wasn't in the mood to get half a damn library aimed at his skull again. His forehead was still sore from the astonishingly hard spine of Maka's copy of "A Passage to India". But then she called pleadingly, "I'm really sorry."
"I'm sorry too," he said fervently, before his door was even fully open, and their words were simple, but they were more than enough for both of them.
She beamed and slugged him in the shoulder. He took the blow and tugged on a pigtail in revenge. She pinched him and suddenly everything was better. "Apologies? Like an actual civilized person? Look how far the great and terrifying Soul has fallen," she teased, squinting in the day's first rays of sun before idly beginning to scrape dried mud off her boots on the edge of his steps.
He snorted, hugely relieved. Seeing her after yesterday's fight, after he'd thought he'd foolishly ruined everything, made him weak at the knees in a totally unmanly way. Yet here she was, grinning back at him, looking as pleased as he felt, and it drove home yet again how unbelievably lucky he was to have someone in sync with him in his life. "Please. I can still make small children cry if I really try. It's only they're usually not worth the effort."
She giggled behind her hand. "Oh, well, then everything's right with the world, isn't it?"
"Obviously," he mock-sneered. "Come on in." She didn't move an inch until he rolled his eyes and added, "I've got coffee, you addict."
"Good." She breezed by him and poured herself a cup from his oversize, battered metal thermos. He watched her stretch on her tiptoes to grab a mug from his cupboard and reveled in how easy she was around him. She knew where everything he owned was, and as of yesterday, she knew everything about him. It was a strange thought, and for a moment he was uncomfortable and prickly, but it passed easily and he was left with only a warm calm.
"I really like that all we had to say was sorry once," she said casually, leaning against his wall and smiling with her eyes at him over the rim of her cup as she sipped.
He went quietly, joyously supernova. "You a mind reader?"
"Don't know. I haven't checked in a while." She mock-squinted at him with her head cocked sideways, then proclaimed loftily, "Ah, yes. You're thinking that I'm the absolute bee's knees and that you're a blessed person for knowing me."
"Oh, Christ." He groaned dramatically and pretended to swoon. "Spot on. You are a mind reader. How could you not tell me something like that?"
She chortled. "Considering how often we argue about silly things, it's probably a skill that'll come in handy, don't you think?"
"Mm. Give me coffee. You barged in here so rudely I didn't even have a chance to get any."
"Pour your own! You lazy brat!"
"Shouldn't talk about yourself that way, bearcat, it's not nice."
"Ugh. Just for that, you get none." She shoved the thermos under the covers of his bed and loomed over it protectively. He raised his brows and edged up close to her; while she was nicely distracted by his arm slipping around her waist, he deftly stole her mug and took a disgustingly loud slurp, smacking his lips obnoxiously after.
"Bastard," she mumbled, and then she clapped a hand over her mouth, looking adorably shocked.
He laughed until he could hardly breathe. "I'm rubbing off on you, aren't I?"
"Don't say such terrible things." She let her head fall forward against his chest and linked her arms together behind his back. There was an awkward moment when he bumped his chin into her head as she moved, but they readjusted and it passed. "It's only because it's coffee. You know how I get about my caffeine."
"Mm," he agreed happily. "I called you an addict for a reason. You've got a problem, you know."
"That's not very nice."
"What on earth did I ever do to give you the impression I was nice?"
"Now that you mention it, nothing. Nothing ever."
"Exactly."
They grinned like absolute morons. He swooped in to kiss her and she melted against him wonderfully. "That's fun," she said when they parted, rather pink across the cheekbones.
He nodded solemnly, just to see her scowl and flick his nose. "Did I earn my own coffee back yet?"
"Hmm. Almost. Try again?"
He did so, enthusiastically. Apparently the thermos was very valuable indeed to Maka because she didn't give it back to him for quite some time. When they eventually forced themselves out of his trailer to go get breakfast before beginning their morning chores, Soul very nearly clapped Stein on the shoulder before catching himself; Stein looked horrified and left the mess tent entirely, muttering under his breath.
Black Star peered at them suspiciously, half a slice of ham hanging out of his mouth. Maka pointed a stern finger at him before he even tried to speak and said, "Dry up, you, or I'll turn you inside out. Slowly."
Black Star scowled, tilted his head, considered, and then, when Maka snatched up a fork to wave at him threateningly, he filled his mouth full of eggs and contented himself with sulking quietly. Soul nudged her in the ribs with his elbow. "You're so nifty," he whispered, tone just a shade shy of adoring.
"I'm aware," she whispered back smugly. God, he was mad for the woman. He didn't even try to steal any of her pancakes.
Later, just before they got the train back on the move, Mira sidled up to Soul and said slyly, waggling her eyebrows like a madwoman, "You seem awful cheerful today."
"Interfering gossip," he snapped, but apparently he wasn't as mean as he meant to sound, because she only laughed as he stalked away.
They lived each day in a delirious, rosy haze that drowned out everything but each other, and they did it deliberately. They filled the early mornings with shared coffee and stolen kisses and flirtatious, barbed banter that made Soul feel entirely sure he could walk on air if he really tried. The afternoons were work, work, and more work, as usual, along with a little hand-to-hand sparring when they could fit it in, but the nights, at least when they weren't performing, were theirs alone.
Some nights were for therapy, and he was left panting and frantic, trembling under her knife or her eyes. Other nights she curled into him, tucking her head into the curve of his neck, and he read to her, her own books, the ones from her satchel and her other life. She said she didn't remember them, but she would nestle in the curve of his arm and follow his finger across the pages as if she could think of nothing else.
Two and a half weeks until midsummer's eve, he peeled himself up from the floor where he'd been lying in a frenzy of bloodlust and gasped in sudden remembrance, "What about the other diary? Your mother's?" She'd taken it back a day or two after their argument, and he'd somehow forgotten about the whole thing. Then again, he had both a beautiful girl to kiss and a very rapidly approaching possible death sentence. Any man could forget things here and there under such circumstances.
She sharpened Mae West calmly, with the skills Black Star had taught her, and fixed him with a level stare. "I had Tsubaki read it to me," she said.
He felt oddly betrayed. The rasp of her blade against the file was harsh in his oversensitive ears. "Why?"
She considered that, prodding him absently with a bare foot until he sat up and leaned against the side of the bed, pushing his face against her overhanging knee, ignoring the smell of horse sweat and dry summer dirt. "I don't know," she muttered at last.
He wrapped his arm around her calf and stared up at her. "Did you find out anything good?"
"A lot of stuff," she said brusquely.
"Didn't wanna ruin it, did you," he accused. The precious pink glow would dissipate if they talked about it, but maybe it was time. He watched her small hands and wondered how it would feel for them to be the last thing he ever felt. Perhaps it wouldn't be that bad. Better than Lord Death's cold grip, anyway, like he'd always expected.
She glared, mouth twisting. "That little girl in my mother's diary isn't me."
"Is that what you're worried about?"
She sighed. "I don't recognize the girl she talks about. I recognize my mother, kind of. She's a lot like me in some ways. I just…" She paused, thinking, and then set Mae West down after a quick glance at him to judge how safe she'd be unarmed. "I'm afraid once I do get my memories back I'll crash all together with the old me, and then I'll be different and I won't fit in here anymore, with the circus. And I like it here, I do, I love it."
"Ah." He considered it. "You can't be that different. When I met you, when I thought you were stealing Aka? You were just the same."
"Really?" She glowed.
"Yes, really." He scooched up onto the bed and made to sprawl out, but she caught at his wrist first. "Mm?"
She took a deep breath. "Show me how you cut things. How you fight."
He stared at her, propped up on one elbow; she twisted around and pressed her face into his stomach. He put a hand on her head and said hoarsely, "It's easier to kill someone if you know how they fight."
"Easier to kill them quickly."
The pink haze was gone now that they'd let the words into the air, and they wouldn't be able to get it back, not for the next two and a half weeks. He twisted a lock of her hair around his finger and watched it glint softly in the lantern light. It reminded him of nothing so much as moonlight on her scythe. "I love this," he mumbled. She started a little and eyed him suspiciously, keeping one ear against his ribcage, and he knew she was listening to his heart. "I love being with you," he clarified, flushing horribly and feeling rather uncomfortable as soon as he'd said it. He forged on anyway, since his old strategy of stomping away dramatically when things got emotional never seemed to work with Maka. "I never thought I'd meet somebody who'd treat me like… like you do. So I hate Jacqueline's prophecy, but if I'm going to die I'd rather it be you who did it."
She burrowed her face into him again. "That's the most idiotic thing you've ever said, and you say an awful lot of stupid things."
"Why is that stupid?" he snapped.
"Oh, well, I don't know, it's not like it would be hard on me or anything, if I have to kill you," she said.
The words were sarcastic, but her tone lacked bite, and she flopped further on top of him in the next second, leaving her legs sticking off the edge of the bed. He sighed heavily and wrapped an arm around her waist, hoisting her properly onto it. "I'll show you in the morning."
She said nothing, but she fisted her hand in the collar of his shirt and didn't let go as he reached over to pinch out the lantern. The smoke drifted over them towards the cracked window, catching the moonlight, and for a moment Maka looked like she had wings.
Soul found his mouth suddenly dry as she breathed against him. It was so unfair, that a thing he'd done as a child, so unknowing, should keep driving him to deadly madness even now. If a man could become a monster, could a monster ever turn back into a man?
After all, since the day of the fire at Merriweather's, he'd done no more evil, at least not deliberately while in his right mind, but he'd not really gone out of his way to do anything good, either. When he killed murders, he did it partially for his own vindication and partially for the pleasure it brought his madness. But if he did do something good, something so good that all his beastly blood could be cleansed… The thought started his pulse to racing.
He swallowed hard and Maka shifted a little. "Soul?" she slurred.
She knew his moods better than he did, even only half awake. "I'm fine. You talk too much. Go back to sleep."
"Wasn't asleep yet anyway." Nonetheless, barely a minute later she started snoring softly.
He chewed on his lip and turned his new, frightening idea over and over in his head. It didn't get any less scary, but almost immediately it took on a heavy life of its own, and he knew this was one of the things he wouldn't be able to run from, even if he wanted to.
The other thing was safe in his arms, for the moment, so he turned his face into the pale moonlight and tried to get some sleep.
"It's like this." He concentrated, and Maka's perturbed expression as she looked at his hand would have been hilarious, if it weren't for the reason he was showing her his blade.
"How can that cut? It's not even in a solid state," she said at last, sounding suspiciously Stein-y. "I… how… Do it again."
He shrugged and let the flickering reddish light curving along his forearm fade, then reformed it after a second of concentration. "You can touch it," he grunted, when she only continued to stand there, goggling at him. "I know you're dying to poke and prod."
"Yes," she said distractedly, and then her fingers were flitting over his arm, skimming tentatively over the red glow.
"It won't cut you as long as you don't touch the edge."
"Oh." She pressed her fingertips into it more firmly now, and her jaw fell open as she encountered tangible resistance from something that looked no more substantial than a rainbow. "This is possibly the strangest thing I've seen with the circus."
Lord. "Really?" he said, uneasy, because if that were true, he must truly be a freak. Then again, he wasn't sure she'd seen Black Star's short-lived comedy act, which had involved the theft of one of Blair's dresses and the early demise of several innocent apple pies used as targets. They'd ended up all over the front row audience members and Lord Death himself had loudly forbidden Black Star from attempting the act ever, ever again. It had been a real blessing for everyone involved, and Lord Death had received a bevy of thank-you gifts from both the circus folk and the audience the next day..
"Well, maybe," Maka said. "It's definitely the most interesting."
"Hmpf." He could live with that, anyway. She started picking up various leaves and twigs and grabbing his arm to saw through them, mumbling under her breath. "I feel like a butter knife," he muttered as she manhandled him.
"Ooh, a new nickname for you," she snarked, still experimenting with his blade. "It's perfect. Who's my wittle butter knife?"
"Ew. You- ew. No. You are never to talk to me in that tone of voice ever again on pain of death. Painful death."
She cackled. "Yes, yes. You know, I don't see why this is such a big secret. A lot of the other people here have… powers. I mean, Harvar's got his spark thing, Marie's got the eye..."
Soul shifted a little and let his blade fade away, sighing at the familiar tingle. It was like having a thousand mosquito bites all over his skin there, for just a second. Maka kept her arm in his and looked up at him calmly, letting him figure out his words; it was one of the many things he'd grown to appreciate about her, her way of somehow knowing when he needed to organize his thoughts on certain subjects and never pressing or hurrying him.
"I suppose it's different because everyone else was born with theirs, or got them in a- respectable way. And mine is because I'm half- uh, monster."
"You're definitely not half. You need to work on your fractions." Then she frowned at him. "Tsubaki told me about schools… if you were so little when you joined the circus, how did you learn to read and do arithmetic?"
"Lord Death gave us kids lessons together."
"Oh, I bet that was…"
"Pretty much as you'd expect."
"Did he smother you in shadows and nightmares if you got a problem wrong?"
"No, but he's very good at looming until you get it right."
She laughed. "I can imagine."
He grinned a little at her, than sat down on a mossy log, leaning back a little so that his eyes were in the shade. "I had an idea."
"Oh?" She pressed a hand to his forehead as if checking for a fever, eyes sparkling. "How bad was the damage?"
Soul grunted and swatted her hand away half-heartedly. "Brat. I was thinking about whether or not any of the monsters have ever turned back."
"Oh." She got the implications of that at once and plopped down beside him, bringing one knee up to her chest and frowning. "We've seen quite a few that still look fairly human in a lot of ways. How far gone are they before they stop talking to you?"
He cringed and ripped up a piece of moss so he could shred it between his fingers. "Pretty far," he admitted reluctantly. "Do you remember the one with wings? The one that slashed you?" He gestured to her shoulder, where the faint pinkish lines of her scars were peeking out from under her sleeveless blouse.
"Yes. That one talked to you?"
"Yes. Actually fairly clearly, too."
"Eurgh." She appeared to contemplate for a moment, then asked, "Have they ever said anything about not… well, you know. Like, 'Don't kill me, I'm innocent!' or 'I didn't mean to do it!' or anything like that?"
"Nope." He dropped the bits of moss and snapped a twig off the log. This entire conversation was making him astonishingly uncomfortable, but at least Maka seemed okay with it, speaking with her usual straightforwardness. "Mostly it's sort of nonsense, or threats, or bragging about all the people they've killed. Sometimes they'll beef about Lord Death, or the circus, you know-" He hunched over and made his hands into claws, growling, "Oh no, it's you lot again! Damn that skull-faced bastard, foiling my evil plans again-"
Maka burst out laughing. "Really? That's what they say? Now I wish I could hear them." Soul's hands fell, and she winced. "I didn't mean- I, well, that is-"
"It's fine," he mumbled, but his attempt to lighten the mood had fallen pretty flat.
"It's strange that so many people in the world do bad things, but not all of them undergo the change," she said softly after a little while, leaning so her shoulder bumped into his.
"Mm. Stein thinks it's probably heritable in some way."
She tried out the word. "Heritable?"
"Erm. Things that get passed on, that make people different?" Soul tried. "Kind of how some people react badly to the measles and other people barely get sick. Or how some people look like their parents and some don't."
"Oh. Remind me to write that down."
"I can write it down for you, you know."
She eyed him with a raised brow. "Maybe. I think I want to track down Stein and ask him about this. Maybe he knows if they can turn back." She stood up and brushed bits of moss and bark off her bottom; he helped by staring and grinning lecherously, to which she blushed and cuffed his ear. Walking away, she called back, "Just for the record, I don't want you turning back anything."
He snorted loudly and wandered off to go feed the dogs, who were setting up a woeful clamor, despite the fact that he was only half an hour late with their dinner. Maybe he was spoiling them.
They were so cute when they begged, though. He cringed at his own thoughts and resorted to shouting and shaking his fist at some nearby bluebirds in an effort to feel more like himself. They only shouted at him shrilly before flying away.
The wagon that Marie and Stein shared was one of the smaller ones, but half the time Stein was in the separate train car that served as his laboratory, a moonshine distillery, and a hospital when needed. Maka remembered the noise of him setting Tsubaki's broken ankle and shuddered as she lifted her hand to knock at the door of his and Marie's wagon; she was glad when Stein opened the door. She wouldn't have to walk all the way back to the hospital car.
"Hello," she said.
He blinked at her, tilted his head, took his glasses off the wipe them on his lab coat, and then finally said, "Hello, Maka. Did you need something?"
"Actually, yes. I've come up with a sort of hypothesis I'd like to run by you." She deliberately left Soul's name out of the equation because if she mentioned him, Stein might refuse to help out of sheer contrariness.
"Hmm." He scratched at his cheek. "I suppose. Go on, then."
"Have you ever seen any evidence that men or women who've begun their change into monsters might turn back? Or, I don't know, at least halt the process?"
"Well…" He drew the word out to the point of ridiculousness, then disappeared abruptly into the depths of his home. Maka stayed firmly put on his doorstep; she would have anyway, honestly, even if he'd invited her in. God only knew what kinds of horrors Stein kept in there. After a few moments of mysterious clattering and thumping sounds, he reemerged, bearing a tattered yellow newspaper.
"This man." He jabbed a finger at a photograph, and she took the paper from him, peering at the picture curiously. The man in it was rather rotund, middle aged, and he had the palest eyes she'd ever seen; obviously they would be blue in person, but the photo made them even lighter than Mira's. It was more than a little uncanny. Other than that, he looked very normal, wearing a nicely cut suit with his slight gut tucked comfortably under his folded hands.
"What's it say?" she asked, handing it back.
"This is Jack Barrow. He's the mayor of Tailholt. It's about two hours north of here, not far, actually."
Maka narrowed her eyes at him. "Suspiciously close."
He grinned toothily and waved the newspaper. "No coincidence. I've got a book full of these."
"Mayors?"
"Ex-monsters."
She stared at him for a breathless moment, then snatched the paper from his hand again, almost tearing it in her haste. "What the hell! You knew about this the whole time and didn't tell Soul? You absolute-"
He cut her developing rant off at the legs quite effectively by swooping back into his cave of a home. "Come on, come on, don't jump to conclusions before you've analyzed all the data," he called.
Damn. Sighing irritably, she followed him inside, squinting as her eyes tried to adjust to the near-perfect darkness. Of course, the moment she got used to it, he flung open some curtains and blinded her all over again.
She was certain the man did things like that on purpose.
"Here." He thrust a battered, stained book into her hands. "I know you can't read, but they're mostly clippings. Look at the pictures for a bit."
She did so. The first picture was another well-dressed man, holding a pair of scissors and cutting a ribbon in front of what seemed to be a public building of some sort. Stare as she might, she couldn't see anything unusual, but then she noticed that his shadow was twice as long and twice as dark as anyone else's in the photo, and her stomach gave a queer drop.
"Keep looking," Stein said, in a near-hiss.
"You're an emotional vampire," she bit back acidly- he only chuckled- but she did as he said and moved on to the next picture, which was a family of two parents and three children, all of which were girls. Again, they all looked very ordinary at first glance, but after a moment she inhaled sharply. "The woman's got two right hands."
"Yes."
"Couldn't that just be some kind of birth defect, though?"
"It could be. In that particular case, it isn't. Notice her daughter on the right, though."
Maka brought the blurry newspaper page nearly to her nose, and sure enough, the oldest of the daughters had two tiny symmetrical bumps under her hair, which could very easily be construed as just a poor styling job or bedhead, if it hadn't been for the numerous pairs of horns Maka had already seen on other monsters.
"I wonder if she grinds them down or something? Or got them taken off. The way they dehorn cattle," she muttered.
Stein crossed his arms and raised a hand to push his glasses back up his nose. "You're missing the point."
"I'm not." She was just wishing she hadn't realized it, because it was highly disturbing on several levels. "You're saying it's a family thing."
"Yes. That's my theory, at least. I believe that immoral acts trigger the change."
She said nothing, moving onto the next picture, which was a teenage boy who had fingers with an extra joint. The picture after that was an older man with a terrible hunchback, except the shape of his hump looked suspiciously like folded, hidden wings, lumpy and awkward. Then came a beautiful woman with hair that trailed three feet on the ground behind her, just as white as Soul's, a single tendril of it caught rising up in the photo like a snake. If anything else on the woman, her clothes or the rest of her hair, had been moving too, Maka could've dismissed it as an effect of some wind, but all else was still.
"They've all got little leftovers, then," she said, twisting the toe of her boot hard into the floor.
"Yes."
"How do you know they're going backwards? I mean, how is it you know they're ex-monsters instead of on their way to becoming monsters?"
Stein reached out, almost fondly, to chuck her under the chin. His hand was terribly cold and clammy, and she shuddered. "Why don't you and I take a little field trip to visit the mayor, Maka? You can find out for yourself, the way I did. These things are always better found out in person, I've always thought… Do you think Tsubaki would mind if I borrowed one of her horses?"
She looked at her boots. "I'll have to ask her."
"All right. I'll be here." He hustled her out and slammed the door in her face.
She pushed the heels of her palms into her eyes, breath hitching, thinking dizzily about extra limbs and bestial, bulging flesh and smiling women with strangling hair, then went to find Tsubaki.
FOOTNOTES:
1: 'Bee's knees' means terrific, awesome, or generally good. There were a lot of other 'animal' expressions too, like the 'cat's pajama's' or the 'elephant's eyebrows.'
2: To 'dry up' is to shut up, be quiet.
3: 'Beef' mean back then, much as today, to whine or complain about something.
4: Tailholt was a name sometimes given to towns near rivers, because pioneers would grab their horse's tails in order to get across- at least according to local legends.
Author says: First of all, big thanks to the awesome auspiciousleader for beta-ing for me! Secondly, I am really really sorry it took so long to get this chapter out- I can't make any legitimate excuses except the usual 'life got in the way' which sounds pretty lame so I'm sorry! Nonetheless, I hope you all enjoy it! I really love all my readers and your reviews totally make my day! :)