SOUL

When Soul wakes for the first time, the first thing he is aware of is not the horrific wound down his chest. No, it's the warmth of the hand clasped around his own, and he doesn't have to guess whose it is. With the reassuring presence of Maka at his side, he slips back into unconsciousness.

The second time he wakes, it's only just long enough to swallow some water and a couple pills, and he's not really aware of anything.

The third and final time he rejoins the world of the living, his eyes blink open only to gaze into an entirely unfamiliar face. This man has glasses and stitches running down his visage, and he stares down at him with wide, crazed eyes. Soul desperately tries to sit up and scoot away from him, but a stabbing, throbbing pain stops him in his tracks. He flops back down onto the sheets in surrender.

Wait … sheets?

Soul blinks hard, trying to clear his vision of the aftereffects of being asleep for so long. As he glances around his surroundings frantically, he realizes that he's not hallucinating. He's lying on a mattress – an uncomfortable one by his previous standards, but after spending a week sleeping with only a thin foil sheet between him and the hard ground, the lumpy cot feels like heaven. He's covered with a sheet and a dingy comforter, and there are actual walls around him.

"Wh –" Where am I, he tries to say, but he can hardly get even the first syllable out. His mouth feels as if it's been stuffed with cotton, and his throat hurts when he swallow. The man sitting before him, dressed in a lab coat so worn one can tell where it's been torn and re-stitched, picks a plastic cup up off the table beside them and hands it to Soul. Soul takes it cautiously, his hand shaking.

"Come on, kid," the man says. "If I'd wanted to poison you, I'd have done it by now. Drink."

I want Maka, he wants to say. If anyone could tell him whether or not this man is actually trustworthy, it would be her. Alas, she's not here right now, and so he's forced to take the man at his word. He raises the cup to his lips hesitantly, but the cool liquid flooding his mouth and running down his parched throat feels just as much like heaven as the mattress beneath him does. He's forgotten what water tastes like when it doesn't taste like warm metal.

A door creaks open, and Soul looks up to see another stranger enter the room. This person is younger, with a shock of pink hair, and Soul relaxes just a bit now that he's not alone with the crazy guy.

"Stein, Mom is – oh, Soul! You're awake!"

Stein. So that's the man's name. Still, that doesn't change the fact that Soul would like to stay away from him if at all possible. He smiles weakly at the newcomer despite the fact his anxiety levels are beginning to rise. He still doesn't know where he is. He doesn't know where Maka is.

"I-I'm Chrona," the newcomer introduces himself, wringing his hands. "I found you and your friends out by the wreck – the Shibusen, was it? You were in pretty bad shape, b-but Stein was able to fix you up."

Soul shivers at the thought of Stein being anywhere close to him while he was unconscious, but he supposes he should be grateful. "Thank you," he rasps, thankful he can at least get words out now. "Where are we? Where's Maka?"

Stein heaves a sigh and pushes away from the bed in his rolling chair, spinning around before facing the two again. Pulling something that looks like a cigarette out of the pocket of his lab coat, he sticks it in his mouth but doesn't light it as he begins speaking. "Well, we're pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, but you've probably figured that out by now if you've been travelling for a week like your girlfriend says."

Soul ignores the girlfriend comment. They're not like that – he doesn't know how to qualify it, exactly – but it's not worth the effort to deny it, either. He doesn't want to deny it. "Are you survivors as well?" he asks hopefully.

The older man shakes his head. "Not of your crash, kid. We were sent as part of a research team several years ago, but we haven't heard from the Inner Rim in almost as many years. Myself, Chrona, and Chrona's mother, Medusa, are all that's left of the original team."

"What … happened to the rest, if you don't mind me asking?" Soul says. "Was it the kishin?"

"The kishin? Oh, you mean the monsters. Yeah, we lost quite a few to those things. A few more died of strange infections and diseases. It's a dangerous world out there, you know. It's remarkable that you survived."

"Only because of Maka, really. She's the only one who knew what we needed to do." Again, he realizes he still doesn't know where she is. He asks again.

"Oh! Right!" Chrona exclaims, "S-sorry, I completely forgot! She, Tsubaki, and Elizabeth are out scavenging the ship for any communications parts that might be intact. T-they went out a while ago, so they should, uh, they should be back soon."

"So Blake, Patty, and Kidd are still here?" Soul asks, a tickle in the back of his throat prompting a coughing fit that leaves him scrambling to take another sip of the – seemingly not poisoned – water.

"Yeah," Chrona confirms. "I'll, uh, tell them you're awake! Oh, and Stein – Mom wants to see you about something. She didn't tell me what."

Stein stands from his chair. "All right, I'd better go see what she wants. She gets hissing mad when she's kept waiting for too long. Don't go too far, Soul. You don't want to reopen your wound."

"I'm not planning on it," Soul grumbles as the two strangers leave the room. And then, for the first time in over a week, he's completely on his own. It's a weird feeling – by this point he's so used to having all of their 'crew' within shouting distance that he's almost uncomfortable to be alone in a room by himself. Even if the cot is lumpy and his chest is bandaged up like a mummy's, it almost feels as if he were back home again, hiding in his room for lack of better shit to do.

But only a few minutes pass before the sound of running feet reach his ears. He barely has time to prepare himself before the door busts open, slamming against the opposite wall. The sound it makes hardly drowns out the cry of "SOUL, BUDDY!" that leaves his best friend's lips.

Soul grins weekly as his friends – because that's what they are now – gather around the bed. Blake claims the rolling chair that Stein just vacated while Patty makes herself comfortable at the foot of the cot. Kidd chooses to stand, but he's smiling as well.

"It's good to have you back," the black-haired man says. "We were worried."

"Yeah," Blake agrees, rolling closer. "I really thought Maka was gonna lose it there. Way to go, dude."

For a long moment, Patty doesn't say anything as she stares into his face. Soul eyes her warily until at last she says, "That Stein guy didn't do anything weird to you, right? He gives me vibes."

"Vibes?"

"Yeah, vibes. Like" – she shudders vigorously – "vibes."

"Uhm, no? I don't think he did? But I was kind of unconscious." He looks to Blake. "How long have I been out?"

Blake leans back in the chair as he counts his fingers. "Let's see. You ghosted yourself the night before we reached the ship – totally not cool, dude. I had to carry your heavy ass all the way there. Then Chrona stumbled across us at the wreck, we got back here that night, and it's been … three days since then?"

Kidd nods.

"So yeah, four days, give or take a few hours. Maka's been a wreck. She seems fine, still doing the grand-old-leader shit she's been doing, but Tsubaki tells me that's what she does when she's messed up about something. She throws herself into something else." Blake takes a deep breath. "What happened between the two of you, dude? I mean, I know you like her but damn, you took a bullet for her! No, worse than a bullet! Something must have happened –"

"It's none of your business," Soul cuts him off brusquely. "Now come on, it's been four days and somehow you've met three completely new people – who weren't on the Shibusen, on this abandoned planet. What's happened since I've been out? Besides Maka freaking out," he says with a dark glare at his friend.

"Well," Kidd says, "this might be the stroke of luck we need to get home. Let's face it – we were never going to be able to get a communications array working without some sort of power source, despite what we told ourselves. We might have been able to jury-rig an energy system using some of the solar panels that were on the hull, but nearly all of them are cracked. Besides, it's unlikely that we could harness the sheer amount of power we would need to send a signal back to the Inner Rim. I won't bore you with the specs; however, the people here have a fairly powerful generator running this place, and they're just as eager to get off this planet – perhaps even more so than we are."

He pauses to take a breath. "The problem is that all the communications tech they have is either not designed to send out a long-distance signal, or it's too ancient to do so. Liz and the others are out searching to see what they can find on the ship that we can use to build our own array, or at least fix and enhance what they have."

"Why aren't you out there with them?" Soul asks, taking another sip of water. "You're the engineer."

"Liz is better at the practical application than I am," Kidd admits, "and they, uh, wouldn't let me go."

"'There will be dead people on board,'" Patty pipes up, imitating her sister. "'We've all seen dead people. You haven't, you lily-livered rich boy. We don't want to deal with you puking or passing out.'"

"Okay," Kidd grumbles, "she didn't exactly say that …"

"But it's what she meant," Patty says smugly. "Cheer up, 'Cuz. She's only looking after you the best she can. She still feels like she owes you."

"Well, she shouldn't. Come on, it's all the girls out doing the dirty work! That can't be right!"

Soul shrugs. "It is when two of them are military and the other two grew up on the streets," he says, "and the men are all – what did you say, Patty? Lily-livered rich boys?"

Patty nods happily and Kidd sighs.

"I know," he says. "I just feel useless, stuck back here. At least I've had the time to really survey the schematics of the generator and the existing communications equipment."

Soul snorts. Welcome to the club, he wants to say, but he doesn't. Instead, he's unable to keep himself from yawning loudly. "Sorry," he says. "I shouldn't be tired after four days of sleep, but I am."

"Stein said you would be," Kidd says. "You should get some more sleep – you need to do all the healing you can. We'll come back later."

Soul nods, his eyelids already slipping shut. "Tell Maka to wake me up when she gets back," he says as the others begin filing out. "I wanna see 'er."

"Will do, bud," Blake says.

He's asleep before the door closes, and he embraces the warm darkness where nothing hurts – not even the large gash in his chest. He does not know how long sleeps for, but when he wakes, it's to that familiar warmth of a hand clasped around his own. Maka.

He doesn't realize he's spoken aloud until she lifts her head off the mattress to gaze up at him with wide green eyes, the same eyes that entranced him aboard the Shibusen so long ago. Darkness has fallen, but the dim lamplight only makes her eyes glow even more vibrantly.

"You're awake," she says roughly, her voice wavering. "I thought – I thought – what were you thinking?"

Soul cracks a half-smile. "It's good to see you too," he says, his own voice thick with the remnants of sleep. "I thought I asked them to tell you to wake me up."

"Idiot," she says, wiping desperately at her face with her free hand. She's too late, though. He sees the glint of the lamplight shining off the tears in her eyes and on her cheeks. "You could have gotten yourself killed! You were so close by the time we finally got you to Stein! Why?"

I wasn't thinking, he could say, or I forgot I was holding the blaster. Both are stupid, stupid excuses though, and so he decides to tell the truth. "I couldn't watch you die," he says hoarsely. "Everyone … we're all depending on you. We need you." No, that wasn't exactly right. "I need you."

"I'm only going to break your heart, and you know it," she whispers, clasping his hand tighter in both of hers. "Once we're off this planet, and the tabloids have had enough of us I – I'm going back into the military, Soul. I can't do that to you."

Soul squeezes her hand. "I'll wait," he says. He knows it's a rash promise to make after the roughest week of his life, but he has never meant anything so sincerely. "How many years do you have left?"

"At least three," she says, "but Soul, anything could happen …"

"Then we'll figure it out later," Soul replies with a yawn. "I'm too tired for any of this 'what-if' shit right now." He tugs on her hand. "Come on. It gets chilly at night."

"But we're inside now –"

"I don't care."

"But your injuries –"

"Maka. You're tiny. You could lie beside me and not touch me at all if you tried hard enough. Come up here."

Even in the dim lighting he can see her smile, and it's beautiful. "Okay, fine," she says. "You win. Move over – carefully!" she adds as he moves a little too enthusiastically and sends a flash of pain through his nervous system.

But then she's snuggled in next to him, and it's as good as any painkiller that insane doctor might have given him.