There is a stretch of silence after the two meisters leave. Marie stayed exceedingly quiet while Stein and Kami were in the room, and as soon as she and Spirit are alone Spirit loses his ability to think of anything to say at all. The quiet is just starting to go tense with awkward self-consciousness when Marie clears her throat and forces a laugh.
"They really don't get along, do they?"
Spirit forces himself to turn partway towards her instead of facing the bed where Stein had been sitting. The other weapon is sitting up in bed. She looks better than he expected, although there is a guilty pang as he does the calculation and realizes how long she has had to recover since he saw her last. Marie has an eyepatch covering her eye, and although her face is still a little swollen and faintly discolored it has the look of a rapidly healing bruise.
When Spirit catches up to Marie's mostly-rhetorical question, he tries to shake his head in response. This doesn't go over well with his body, so he speaks instead. "No. Not at all, really." It's strange to talk about Kami with someone else, strange to talk about Stein at all, but Marie is looking at the door instead of at him and the awful tension of the two competing relationships in his life suddenly feels like a weight on Spirit's chest. Words start to come out of him before he can stop them or think that maybe she was just making conversation rather than asking for a confession. "I like them both but they really seem to loathe each other. It's kind of awful having them in the same room, which is too bad because I'd like to spend time with both of them, you know?"
Marie's focus is back on him now, but Spirit is reading sympathy off her face instead of the complex, loaded neutrality of Stein's usual expression, and her quiet attention is giving him an invitation to talk that he is incapable of refusing. "I like Kami - a lot - but Stein's my partner and I feel like he disapproves of her. Maybe he has a reason I don't know about, though, and I'm worried he's totally justified, but she's so nice and I don't know why he would dislike her." He chokes a shallow laugh. "I can see why she would dislike him, the way he's been acting with her. Stein's not a particularly likeable person."
Marie starts to shake her head before she cuts off the motion. A tiny curve appears at the corner of her mouth like a secret and her eyes unfocus. "I like him."
Something in her tone brings Spirit up short. There's some extra meaning to her words that he's not quite understanding although he can tell it's there, as if it is some invisible wall he can feel but can't see.
"Well. Maybe you're just very forgiving." He tries to sound gently complimentary but the words just come out confused to his own ear. "I mean he hasn't been particularly friendly with you."
The other weapon comes back into focus on Spirit's face. Her face creases into incomprehension for a moment before she speaks. "Well, he was pretty distant during -" Her voice cracks into silence but she carries on speaking so rapidly that Spirit almost doesn't notice the higher pitch in her tone. "It's been great to have a visitor though. I mean -" She waves her hand, looks away. "I know you're busy, of course, and I don't mean this as criticism at all so please don't think I do, but it's been kind of lonely in here on my own since I stopped being entirely drugged up all the time."
Guilt sweeps over Spirit and briefly drowns out the physical ache of his body. He has thought of Marie, several times in fact, but the idea of actually seeing her has been too awkward to contemplate. He couldn't think what he would say to express sufficient sympathy or what he would do if she started crying or what they would talk about, and it has been easier to just put off the visit he knows he should make.
"I am really sorry," he says, even though Marie is shaking her head in refusal of his apology already. "I - I'm just sorry, about everything." He feels like he should say more, but words are sticking in his throat and he doesn't know how to express what he wants to say without touching on the infinite pool of selfish relief that is still horribly prevalent in him. Then the further implication of her words hits him.
"Stein came to visit you?" The emphasis is insulting - he realizes this as soon as the words are out of his mouth - but the shock in him is too great to allow any chance to edit himself before the statement comes out.
Marie looks perplexed. "Didn't you know? I thought -" She stops short. The confusion on her face clears off into a blush that is dark enough that it is clear even over the lingering smudge of bruise. "Yeah. He's been by every couple of days."
Hurt washes over Spirit. He doesn't know why he should feel betrayed or why he should feel jealous, of all things, but that is definitely what this is. His ability to adequately respond to this information is entirely gone, and he has no idea what he must look like; he feels like he's been physically slapped. It doesn't help that his guilt is rising in lockstep with his hurt feelings, that he knows this is unfair and irrational and it's good for Stein to have friends, that he can't very well begrudge the meister a relationship when he wants nothing more than to follow up on Kami's recent kiss. But the guilt and the logic are proving utterly useless tools against hurt feelings and a strange sense of panicked abandonment.
Spirit doesn't realize how awkwardly long the silence has stretched until Marie coughs in an utter failure to sound casual and starts speaking again. Her voice is even higher now, taut with frantic discomfort.
"Are you and Kami dating, then?"
The weapon's head is so full of Stein that is very hard to bring himself back to a place where he can adequately process Marie's question. She keeps talking when he doesn't respond right away, apology coming strong into her tone.
"Sorry if I'm being pushy. I didn't - you just looked like you were - she seemed really casual and I hadn't heard anything about it from Stein. If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, I'm just - kind of trying to make conversation." An awkward laugh that is too short and too sharp-edged to do anything but ratchet the tension higher. "Sorry. Again. I'm -" Spirit looks up at her and she is shaking her head and staring at her hands. "Sorry."
He has to laugh. There's nothing else he can do when confronted with that much anxiety in someone else. He starts speaking as soon as he can control his voice, talking over her continued mumbled apologies until she trails off to silence.
"No. I mean, no, don't feel sorry. Yes. Well. Uh." He looks away and laughs again, this time at himself. "I don't know? That sounds really dumb. Sorry. We've been talking a lot? And went out for coffee once, but - well, that wasn't really successful. This is, uh - new."
"Oh." Marie bites her lip. "Sorry I asked. It looked pretty - confirmed."
"Yeah, it did, didn't it?" Spirit can't seem to stop punctuating with nervous laughter. "I don't know. Probably. Let's just say close enough?"
"Well. Congratulations." The smile Marie gives him is warm and genuine. Spirit is startled to realize how long it's been since he just talked to someone who isn't Kami or Stein, and surprised to find how easy it is to smile back.
"So." Marie looks away. She is still smiling but it is starting to look slightly forced, and although her voice is lower in range it sounds oddly mechanical with deliberate casualness. "Is Stein seeing anyone? Do you guys ever go out together?"
The second half, accompanied by a breathless laugh, is so hard on the heels of the first that Spirit is too confused for a moment to understand the import of her question. He answers both at once. "No. Yeah. No, definitely not."
"I guess it'd be hard with Kami and Stein not getting along."
"Yeah. Well, yeah, but Stein's not seeing anyone either. I mean we went out once with Kami's partner, but that..."
The awareness of what Marie is really saying trickles into the back of Spirit's consciousness until it reaches the top of his brain, at which point it entirely eclipses the tail end of his half-formed sentence. He manages to keep his mouth shut this time, which is good, because he's pretty sure blurting "Oh my god, you like Stein," would be insulting and embarrassing and impolite all at the same time. The silence that has invaded his speech is something of a tell, but Marie is looking out the window instead of at him and there is a hint of a smile on her face, and that expression is definitely not for Spirit and he's sure she isn't listening to him at all anymore.
The introspective pleasure on the other weapon's face and the ache of hurt feelings in Spirit's chest rotate and click together into an explanation that he would never have considered with either individually. The realization is like cold water as all his skin prickles with a chill of what is undeniably horror, although Spirit can't explain this reaction any more than he can his earlier sense of betrayal. All he knows is that Stein visiting Marie without telling him, Marie's clear interest in his meister, and the possibility that Stein might reciprocate her feelings are all leaving him feeling like the world has turned on him and gravity doesn't work anymore. His stomach is falling endlessly and he feels like he might be sick. It takes a monumental force of will to make himself smile, even though he knows the expression isn't making it to his eyes.
"I'm pretty sure you're the only person Stein's been seeing regularly. Other than me, of course." He is trying to sound dismissive of his own role in the meister's life, a little self-deprecating while reassuring Marie that she doesn't have any competition to worry about, but the pain is spreading through him like a cancer and it is hard to keep self-pity out of his tone.
The way Marie's face lights up is almost worth it. Spirit tries very hard to tell himself that making someone else happy is more important than his own offended feelings. He almost succeeds in convincing himself.