Every bone in Spirit's body hurts.
He should be glad to be alive. He is glad to be alive. The possibilities of the future are available to him again, and he is trying very hard to cling to the positive side of that, but he is alone now, again, and the nightmare of being alone forever is creeping up on him. Lord Death hasn't moved since Spirit came to, although as far as anyone can tell he is probably still alive, Maka is gone inside an impenetrable black sphere, and there is no sign of Stein or Marie or Crona. For all Spirit knows everyone is dead already and he truly is on his own.
At least I'm alive, he tells himself, voice as firm as he can manage inside his own head in spite of the ache of his body and the bruises over his muscles and the probable fractures along his ribs. There are always possibilities.
"Any movement down there?" Sid asks. He is standing at the edge of a hole in the Death Room, apparently created upon the Kishin's exit, although Spirit wasn't lucky enough to see that event. Azusa is next to him, along with B.J. and Excalibur, all four of them staring down at the darkness below. Spirit would be with them if he could stay on his feet and if the unchanging black didn't depress him more than his current position.
"Something must have happened," he offers. Blair kneels behind him, settles his coat back over his shoulders. The pressure of the fabric hurts against his over-sensitive skin but the warmth gained for his chilled skin is worth it. "There's a crack in the Grim Reaper's mask that wasn't there before." Not that he knows what that means, of course. He's not particularly useful at the moment. He wishes briefly that he had stayed unconscious until everything was over one way or another, so he could simply have awoken to either the end of the world or what pieces are left of it and not had to wait to find out which it will be.
"Are you alright, Death Scythe?" Sid sounds concerned, almost surprised to see Spirit sitting.
"Eh." Spirit would shrug if it didn't sound so exhausting. "Could be a lot worse." He almost believes himself this time.
Sid turns to Azusa. "Can't you use your clairvoyance to see what's going on with the students and the Kishin inside the barrier?"
"I can't." The Death Weapon sounds frustrated, resigned, human. "Not without a pre-established link to at least one of them."
"Then for all we know the battle could already be over."
Spirit's stomach drops out at Sid's words, too close an echo to his own fears, but then the other man goes on and Spirit realizes that it was meant to be optimistic. "Maybe they beat it."
"Fool!" Spirit would flinch from Excalibur's voice if he had the energy. He just shuts his eyes instead. "Nothing has been decided yet. The battle's still going on."
"What? Are you sure about that?" Sid is impressively calm. Spirit wants to applaud the other man's tolerance for the Holy Sword.
"Fool! Of course I am."
"Does that mean you can see what's going on inside?" Azusa starts, but Excalibur cuts her off before she can finish.
"Fool! Silence! I require a cup of tea before I deign to answer that."
Spirit sighs. Quietly. He doesn't want to have a fight of any real sort at this point, verbal or otherwise, and he's never seen anyone win a fight against Excalibur's single-minded determination.
"Um, how 'bout coffee instead?" B.J. asks.
"Fool! I said tea. And I mean tea."
B.J. and Sid sigh, speak in perfect unison with each other and Spirit's own internal monologue. "This guy."
"Hey everybody."
At first Spirit thinks the words are from one of the others looking down on the battlefield. But the voice isn't right, he knows that voice, who is that speaking?
"What's all the commotion?"
He is turning before he quite completes the recognition process, startled adrenaline crushing past his pain for a moment while his heart tries to speed him right back into unconsciousness. His eyes come open, swallow up details while his thoughts skid incoherent across his mind. Hand up, smile, he knows that smile, glasses shining white under the diffuse light, grey shirt, where is his coat? But he is standing and moving and waving and it is, there's Marie and Crona and shock seizes Spirit's mouth and splashes sound over his tongue.
"Stein!" The syllable is loaded with surprise and delight and relief too blended to separate. 'When did you get back here?" There is so much more he wants to say, so many more questions, but there are too many to choose one and too much of an audience to choose some and he can't stand, can't make it to his feet to surge forward like he wants to but that's okay, Stein is here and that is enough, and then the meister looks to him and is grinning and speaking, voice light and teasing like he hasn't been gone all this time, like there was no doubt that he would be back.
"Why, did you miss me?" His tone is amused, bubbling with emotion, but his eyes are bright on Spirit's face and then his shoulders drop, his hand comes up to brush through his hair. "I guess I should apologize for causing so much trouble."
Of course I did, Spirit thinks. I don't mind, Spirit thinks. I forgive you, Spirit thinks.
"Little late for that," Spirit says.
"This is serious," Azusa cuts in, and Spirit could hit her if she weren't right and also out of arm's reach. "Maka, Black*Star, and Kid are all inside that barrier fighting the Kishin as we speak."
He had forgotten, how could he forget, even with the shock of seeing Stein when he had thought never to see him again how could he forget his own daughter, how could he have been happy for even a moment? Guilt washes hot into Spirit, all the surprised joy evaporates, and when he says "Maka," he doesn't do so consciously.
"Then it's up to her," Stein says. "To Maka. We were right about it coming down to Genie Hunter."
"Her mother's technique," Spirit says, clarifying Stein's sentence without thinking, old habits overriding years of effort with his guard lowered by exhaustion and pain. Crona chimes in too, the three of them speaking together like they are a single entity. "Maka's Genie Hunter."
"The anti-magic wavelength," Stein goes on. "An incredibly powerful move handed down to her by her mother." He walks past Spirit to stand at the edge of the hole in the Death Room, eyes fixed on the scene below, and all the guilt in the world can't keep Spirit's eyes from lingering against the move of Stein's shoulders under the grey fabric, can't keep him from documenting all the signs of health and relative sanity in the meister's movements, and he is suddenly darkly glad he can't go to Stein because he doesn't know what he would do, even with Marie right here and Maka not here he can't trust himself to keep the distance he should.
So he stays still, stops trying to stand with muscles that won't obey him, and tries very very hard to keep his breathing level and his thoughts calm and drinks in every part of Stein he can see, the angle of his hips when he comes to stand next to Sid and the slant to his shoulders and the way his hands fit into his pockets and the pattern of thread linking his sleeves to his skin, and even that last doesn't disturb Spirit like it should, doesn't do anything but speed his heart with mingled joy and relief and misery, and Spirit just stares and tries to not think about what will happen later, tries to just appreciate that in the now Maka is still fighting and Stein is here near him and they are all still alive, because anything can happen as long as they are all alive.