Maka opens her eyes to dim light filtering through partially opened blinds and suppresses a yawn that threatens to escape her. There is a warm pressure against her side that she knows is the kitten her mother bought her when they had left Death City. It is curled into a small ball, still sleeping contentedly. She tries to slip out of bed without waking it, but fails, the little ball of fur stretching and yawning cutely before butting its head against her hand.

She smiles, rubbing the kitten behind the ears at it pushes into her lap, and she lets herself yawn finally. Her mother opens the door, a bright smile on her face as she tells Maka that breakfast is going to be homemade chocolate chip waffles. The kitten rubs up underneath her chin, purring loudly, and Maka is reminded of Blair.

She can almost forget what has happened, but even as she opens her mouth to thank her mother, Soul moves behind the woman going to the bathroom. He is going the wrong way for their apartment, and reality crashes down over her. Kami's face crinkles in worry as a tear slides down Maka's face, one of Maka's hands tightening slightly on the kitten. A moment later Maka smiles at her mother, and Kami can almost believe that the moment of pain she saw on her daughter's face didn't happen. The same thought echoes in both of their minds, though.

If not for Spirit's actions, none of this would have happened, and they both hate him for it.

Spirit's eyes opened slowly, the death scythe stretching his body, reaching upwards to touch his headboard, his fingers wanting to twine around the iron bars. A yawn escaped him just as his fingers brushed against wood. The unfamiliar feeling jarred him from his peace and he was on his feet a second later, adrenaline surging through his body and eliminating the residual sleep.

There was a thud and it took Spirit a moment to focus his eyes to realize what had happened, one of his arms a scythe held defensively in front of him. A low chuckle came from the opposite side of the bed and Spirit relaxed, his arm transforming back so that he could reach to sheepishly rub the back of his head.

"Sorry."

Stein just stood from the floor, his face an impassive mask that only Spirit could see the humor lurking in. A brief surge of embarrassment rushed through the death scythe as he realized that he was naked and the man across from him was clad only in pair of sleep pants; the scientist's muscled chest and torso invoking something in the death scythe that he didn't want to acknowledge at that time.

Stein saved him the embarrassment, grabbing his lab coat from the floor as he stood and tossing it to the death scythe. "I have some things that I must attend to today, Spirit. You're welcome to stay here in the lab if you'd like, or you may leave. Just do me a favor," Stein said, pausing for a moment to make sure that Spirit was listening.

"What's that?" Spirit asked as he shrugged his arms into the lab coat, pulling it closed in front of him, hiding the source of his shame. Stein just smirked as he brushed past the death scythe before pausing in the doorway.

"Stay sober."

With those words he slipped out of the room, the door closing behind him with a quiet click. Spirit shook his head, ignoring the headache that was raging behind his eyes and the pulsing in his temples to sit down on the edge of the bed. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands as he listened to Stein's footsteps become more and more distant before he collapsed on his side in the bed, drawing his knees to his chest and blinking back tears.

The events of the last few weeks were rushing through his head, Kami's last words to him echoing in his mind.

"She's not your daughter anymore, Spirit. I didn't push custody, even though it was awarded to me, and I allowed her to stay here, with you, to continue her training. You let her get involved in something that had already claimed the life of a death scythe- something that had already cost Marie her life. This was far too dangerous for her. She's leaving with me and her weapon in the morning."

"She's a meister, Kami, a damn good one! Soul's a death scythe! They can't just up and leave like you did!"

"They can't? Have you ever thought that maybe Shinigami-sama ok'd my leaving? That he is aware of where I am at all times and that way I can take care of any situations that arise? You seem to forget that I am a damn good meister as well. They're going to be doing what they do best, but they're not going to be here, where you can drag her into another situation that is going to threaten her life! If you truly loved her, you'd understand just what you did to her. Then again, if you actually knew what love was we would never have divorced, would we?"

He had been shocked by the venom in her voice, and she had left without another word to him. He had called out to her, his pained voice trying to explain that they had both been possessed. She had ignored him, just flipping her hair over her shoulder.

Spirit drifted back to sleep, heedless of the tears that spilled down his cheeks and the sobs that hiccuped from him even as he did.

Stein had never been interested in law. It was something that he rarely needed to know anything about- his particular skill set meant that he was rarely on the other side of the law unless it came to something endangered, and Shinigami-sama took care of that for him. That was why he was sitting in front of his computer, pinching the bridge of his nose as his glasses hung limply from his other hand's fingertips. It had taken 6 hours of searching, but he believed that he may have found a loophole that would allow Spirit to take custody of Maka, despite Kami's beliefs.

Kami had abandoned Maka. There had been no communications from her*, and regardless of what she had said to Spirit, her "prolonged work assignment" had lasted for over a year at this point in time. If they could prove it to be abandonment… then maybe, just maybe Spirit could take custody away from Kami.

Because who knew what would happen if Kami abandoned Maka again, this time without her father to be with her if there was trouble, say in another country where Maka may not even speak the local language?

A smirk crossed Stein's face. He knew he had hit the proverbial nail on the head. All it was going to take was a little bit of time to gather information on a woman who had left her daughter and went gallivanting across the globe.

Besides, Shibusen wasn't a well-known institution to anyone but military officials. Kami wouldn't be able to use the weight of claiming it was on Shibusen's orders that she had left her daughter behind without the judges favoring Spirit. She wouldn't be able to have her friends inside Shibusen pull strings for her either.

It would come down to whoever could appeal more to the judges, and Stein had been subjected to enough of Spirit's emotional break downs to believe that he had a chance at convincing the judges that he was a better parental figure than Kami, despite the circumstances behind their divorce. Stein could only hope that Maka would come to her senses, and that no one would try to use him against Spirit.

A/N: *Please remember, this is manga based. There are NO postcards from Kami to Maka in the manga, that is purely anime.

I'm sorry the update took so long. I'm not going to lie; I've been sucked back into Warcraft. I'll be updating a different story next; I hope that you like the introduction of a sorts to the next section of "Secrets and Confessions." My next update to this will be longer, as well.

Thanks for sticking with me :3

/Lialane