Author's Note: This is it! Now all that's left is an epilogue and then onto the next thing! I was trying to have a title for you, but alas, I'm not sure yet. Some more research is needed. Anyways, I do hope this conclusion doesn't disappoint. As always, let me know what you think, continue being safe during these erratic times, thank you all so much for sticking with me through the still glacial updates, and enjoy!
Stone walls both dampened and exaggerated the sound of her breath, sharply in, rasping out. Candlelight flickered out of sync, casting lazy shadows on top of the web of vines coating the ceiling and walls, adding to her disorientation. She reached out again, searching for Crona's soul, looking for her own path to him, or minimally a certain one. Now that she was inside there was something for her to sense, a shimmer she couldn't place or name, but the magnetic field still distorted her perceptions. Even Soul, a scythe in her hands, seemed distant and off. Unsettling as that was, it at least meant the shimmer was probably Crona and not some artifact of magic. It at least meant he was just ahead, down in the stomach of this rock monster, down where the dissolving happened…
"Maka," Soul's voice probed, his concerned face flashing across the reflective surface of his blade. "We don't have a lot of time; we need to move."
"I know," she meant to reassure him but it came out somewhat too uneasy for that. "There's no going back now, so it doesn't really matter if I'm ready, right?"
"You've got this." Soul had always been better at the reassuring thing. "You have everything you need. If anyone can bring Crona back it's you."
"What-" Maka's voice broke and she swallowed hard, paralytic fear crystallizing inside her chest. "What if he doesn't-"
"Don't say it," Soul snapped, harsh and unrelenting. "Don't think it. You can't doubt yourself or Crona, not now."
She ran her tongue over her upper lip nervously, chancing a glance over her shoulder. The tangled thicket of Black Blood had settled into stillness, intertwining thorns blocking out all daylight. And it seemed to Maka that they were blocking all hope as well, that the dream of saving the person she loved had been left on the other side. Consuming the certainty she'd had before and replacing it with doubt and despair. Who was she going to find in the darkness?
"Soul," she whispered, gripping the shaft of the scythe tightly. "I'm scared."
"It's what makes you stronger."
He didn't miss a beat. Even now, even here, even as they abandoned Vera and descended into the dense, swirling fog of Madness that encased Crona like psychotic armor, Soul was steadfast. Maybe one day he'd falter and snap, but it wasn't today, which meant Maka also had to pick another time to be consumed by uncertainty. Now she held her weapon at the ready and willed herself forward, slowly. Her footsteps created a cacophony anyway, ignoring her attempts to quiet them and ringing against the stone. Announcing her descent. Out in the sand the Black Blood had objected to this, Crona had regurgitated it from the cave to keep them from getting in. He'd used Vera as a medium so he could stay hidden. She'd expected the resistance to continue, expected his rage would not be defeated so easily. The fact that there was nothing but silence in the stairwell both encouraged and unnerved her. Her plan, such as it was, felt brittle. Her heart, hammering and fragile, shivered in terror in her chest. The questions she'd been afraid to ask coalesced into one: could she survive being hurt the way she'd hurt Crona? And as she reached the end of the hall and her feet planted in the main chamber, she confronted her answers.
It was true: Pendra was dead. Copper stained the air and dirt floor. A large oblong spot of dark just a little deeper into the room and to the left. She'd seen it before with the victims of the Kishin Eggs; the body did integrate into the soul at the time of death, but anything that was over a certain distance away, or had been separated from the main body for a long enough time, was left behind. Usually blood that had escaped the scene during a slow death, or had tried too. Evacuated into the earth like the stain before her. The massive centipede from Crona's back was curled up dead in the remnants of its master, almost blending into the dark brown-red, its legs a memory of what had been. Shards of shattered glass and wood littered the floor, glinting like treasure in the candlelight. And from almost the place where she stood to the far side of the room, there was a smeared trail of blood brushed over the dirt. A second, branching and entwisting trail across the walls and ceiling merged at the same point. Two paths of blood, both of which led to a solitary, lithe form in crushed black velvet.
His back was to her, vertebra sharp peaks through near translucent skin, each one accented by puncture marks on both sides. The Black Blood had hardened, preventing any loss of blood or spinal fluid, but the ripped skin, puckered in a ring around the abyss of blackness, would take longer to heal. So that too was true; Crona had torn himself free of the centipede. Nothing of Pendra's influence lingered- at least nothing quantifiable. Maka felt an immense sense of relief stained with an old fear at the realization. She wanted to run to him, to throw down her weapon and embrace him again, yet she found she couldn't move. Her lips parted but it was Crona who spoke first.
"I knew you'd find me. I knew you'd come for me, no matter what I put in your way. You always do," his voice was soft, resigned, but not so soft as to explain why it didn't echo like everything else off the hard walls. "Sometimes before it happens, sometimes after. At the last moment or too late. Which is it now? I've been wondering that, wondering if you were going to stop me this time."
"Stop you," she repeated, rasping to his back as her mouth dried up. "Crona I came to save you. I came to bring you home."
"That's the same thing."
It was only now that he turned to look at her, only now that he showed her exactly what she'd come to face. Books that had been obscured by his shadow levitated in the air, quivering like the candlelight that bathed them- that bathed everything. Everything except Crona. His form devoured the fire, hard and devoid of all warmth, his face like a heart-rending rendition of fatigued sorrow in white marble. And his eyes… Maka didn't know what blackness was before she saw those eyes. Was it that his pupils had dilated so much that they'd swallowed his massive irises? Or had half the capillaries in his sclera ruptured to create a pool of blood that had spread across his vision? Was that why he looked so vacant? Like he both recognized her and didn't.
"It's funny, we've been here so many times, in so many places, and I was always afraid. I couldn't get away from the fear, no matter what I tried, not without you. But this time I- I'm past fear, on the other side of it. Is this what it's like to embrace what you are? I couldn't know until you came. I couldn't move forward until it meant turning my back on you. This is it, this is the last bond that needs to be cut before I finish becoming what I can't help but be."
"Is that why you brought us here," Maka snapped, an unrestrained tongue of indignation, anger, and pain lashing out, ricocheting around the cave walls. "Is that why you told Vera how to find you and why you had her lead us out into the middle of nowhere? So you could kill me and be done with it? You said you're past fear, but that's a pretty cowardly move."
"Vera? The girl Pendra used like she used me," Crona said, perhaps perplexed, perhaps regurgitating the only information he knew he knew on the subject. "I can feel she has Black Blood and I wonder how she got it, but it was not my doing. I haven't had any contact with her since she delivered the centipede. None until just now."
"Yes you have," Maka insisted, pressing forward a single, hopeful step. "Prolonged exposure to Pendra's magic left her with the ability to astral project. She found you that way and you told her how to lead the rest of us here. We never would've found you otherwise, not in this cave where Soul Perception doesn't work."
"I know that. But I didn't bring you here. I don't want to be stopped."
"I think you're less sure about that than you pretend to be."
"Why don't you ask Soul how sure I am?"
His features barely rearranged, a flaring of the nostrils, a dip of the eyebrows, and the faintest twitch of a snarl around his lips. But his voice was sharp and it cracked against the stone, angry. Soul grunted and shuddered, warming in Maka's hands like a warning. She could feel their souls slip out of alignment and start to grind painfully against each other, could hear a distant knocking at the Black Door.
"Put me down," Soul whispered, his serious face flashing in the scythe's blade again. "He's trying to activate my Madness through the Black Blood, like he's doing with Vera. I can keep him out but not without just passing it to you instead. We need to stop resonating."
"You're so arrogant," Crona almost scoffed. "If I wanted to overwhelm you like I've overwhelmed the girl, you couldn't keep me out. You'd dissolve like her and you'd harden like her… like me."
"Then why don't you do it," Maka shot back, though she did lean Soul against the wall by the door, turning her back to Crona for a second of weaponized vulnerability. "Why haven't you taken over Soul and killed me yet? Why are we talking? What's you're endgame?"
"I…" Crona faltered, dropping his gaze for a moment as another emotion fought its way onto his face. "I don't know. There is something I need to do, desperately, like I'm starving, but I don't know what it is. My mother wanted me to eat souls and become Kishin, and Pendra wanted me to become this, yet neither of these is right. I thought it would've become clear by now. Maybe I haven't learned enough yet…"
The emotion faded into dusk as he seemed to relax back into the stupor in which she'd found him. Wordlessly he twisted around, returning his attention to the levitating tomes. Maka growled as the last traces of fear she'd been experiencing evaporated.
"Don't turn away from me! If you want to fight then we'll fight but do not act like I'm not here!"
"I didn't ask you to come. I knew you would, but I didn't want you to."
"You're right," Maka almost laughed, pulling Crona's gaze over his shoulder. "I came because I wanted to. I came to be with you, to keep the promise I made to you. Or does that not count for anything anymore? I love you, Crona-"
"Don't say that to me!"
A pulse of telekinetic wind sent the open books like projectiles into the bookcases surrounding Crona, shoved more glassware into the graveyard on the floor, and whipped Maka's trench coat around her like a wild bird. Crona turned fully and advanced, truly livid now, crackling with magic and insanity. And yet Maka smirked at him, pleased with herself for striking such a sensitive nerve. Because if such a thing still existed, if he could still experience strong, human emotions, then her hope had not been misplaced. If she could still hurt him, she could still help him.
"Don't you say such a thing to me," he elaborated, voice quiet now, echoing like hers nonetheless. "Not ever again."
"Even if it's true? Even if I mean it?"
"You don't say things you don't mean. I never thought that could be a bad thing until you last used those words, when you used them in the dungeons. Until you confessed that my magic and my Madness meant you couldn't trust me, that you don't know how to deal with me. Pendra died forcing me to understand that makes us natural enemies- I killed her for forcing me to understand. Now I can't take it back. I can't close my eyes to those truths that burn brighter than yours."
"What about "I'm sorry," am I allowed to say that? Because I mean it too. I'm sorry I was a coward myself, even though I've always pretended to be brave. I'm sorry I didn't stay with you when you needed me the most. I'm sorry I left you. I ran away because I fixated on your magic and Madness and forgot that trust is about the individual, that it goes two ways. Now I can see you wouldn't have done what you did if you'd really believed you could trust me or anyone else with your research. And that you weren't wrong…"
Maka faltered, rolling her lips and searching the floor for the right words. She started when Crona found them first.
"But I was. I knew it was wrong. I knew I had to stop, that I was going too far, but I didn't- I can't stop. Now we're here."
"No Crona, this isn't your fault. Pendra played us, she took advantage of every slip any of us made. I'm not going to say I agree with everything you did or that all of it was justified, but it needed doing."
"It needs doing. I'm not finished."
"Come back with me," Maka's voice broke as she took two more rushed steps towards him, stumbling and stopping abruptly as if the movement was more overflow from a massive dam than a decision. "Please come back with me. Come back to Death City, to school, and continue your work there. We all came for you- we miss you! We just want things to be like they were."
"Why do you refuse to understand? That's not possible. I can't go back, can't be what you want me to be," his voice held a plaintive edge, his eyes shining as their Crona fought off the shroud of apathy, or at least peeked around it. "What I need- where I'm going- I'll have to pass through a world where nothing lines up to get there. A world of Madness that I have no choice but to create. I won't be whole until I fulfill my function, until I've become what I was engineered to be and done what I was created to do."
"And I could never let that happen. Don't force me to choose Crona, don't make a decision we'll both regret and claim there was no other way."
"You wouldn't regret it if…" he trailed of, swallowing, tense and suddenly nervous- desperate even. "If you came with me. We could all pass through that world, all of us, everyone, then, maybe, we could all be free. The Black Blood wants to spread; we could let it. We wouldn't have to fight if you became like me."
"Yes we would," Maka sighed, wrapping her arms around herself as if cold and dropping her emerald gaze. "Even if I was tempted and let myself sink back into the Madness of the Black Blood, we would still have to fight- I would still have to fight. You may have some semblance of self in the Madness but I don't. I'd try to kill you and I'd enjoy every moment of it. If we're to be enemies again, I'd rather it break my heart to hurt you than feed my Madness."
"Then we're at an impasse, where we started."
Crona seemed to crystallize again at her rejection, stubbornly hurt and withdrawn. Like she'd just slapped away the only olive branch in existence. Maka felt her own frustration flare and lash out.
"No we're not," she snapped, swinging her eyes back to his and closing the gap between them, not yet touching him but close enough to feel the devouring cold emanating from his body. "You keep saying you don't have a choice, that you don't want to be stopped, but a part of you still knows that's all bull shit! Think! Remember! You designed a solution, you reached out to Vera, you brought us here! Why do that if things are so hopeless? Why are we talking instead of fighting? Why haven't you killed me yet?"
"I… I don't know," Crona whispered, taking a single step back and, for the first time, reaching one hand across his chest to grab his other arm.
"Yes you do," Maka insisted, chasing him.
"Stay away from me!"
"Maka," Soul barked a warning, but she ignored them both, reaching out and pressing her palm to a cheek so cold it burnt her, feeling him shudder then relax under her touch.
"Yes you do," she repeated, softly now, staring into the endless pits of his eyes and reaching out with her soul, knowing it would be at once painful and necessary for both of them. "If this is truly the world you want to live in then I will leave now and give you time. We will be enemies the next time we meet. But I don't believe that's what you want at all. I know you don't want to hurt anyone and I know you're not so deluded as to think creating a world filled with Madness won't have that consequence. I think that what's past fear is despair and to come back you'll have to be afraid again, and I wish that wasn't true. So I understand why you don't want to remember and consider other paths, I do. Still, you have to. Before you make your decision, remember everything that's led up to it. Think, Crona; do this one thing for me. Please?"
"I did it…" he started, eyes wide and unblinking. "I did those things because… because I don't want to be like this. Because I thought I could defy my nature and be safe and normal. I was wrong."
"No you weren't. You were just alone. I'm here now, we're all here, and we finally understand. Come back with us- with me. Come be with me."
"Maka," Crona breathed, a single, glittering tear breaking free from his eyelashes and falling straight down the cheek she wasn't cradling. "I can't change what I am."
"No," she agreed with a tiny smile that startled him, removing her hand from his face and going for his long fingers, gingerly prying them from his arm and bringing them to a little lump under her trench coat. His breath caught when he felt it, his body going taut.
"But you decide who you are."
"You finished it," he whispered, eyes flicking downward and then back to her face several times. "I knew you were trying. I don't remember how but I knew. Everything inside me tells me I need to destroy this and yet I…"
"I don't know how it's going to work or where we'll go from here, I just know that this is the choice you've never had before. It's the choice you gave yourself and now you have to make it for yourself; you have to do what you want to do. As much as I want to I can't do this for you, but if you come back with us I promise not to run away from you again. I promise to stand with you and be honest and even critical, if that's what you need. And if you slip into this Madness again against your will, I promise to beat you back to yourself before anyone can take advantage."
She removed her hands from his and fished out a fine silver chain from under her collar, pulling it over her head and sliding her tie through the loop. The stone wasn't massive, roughly the size and shape of the hole your fingers make when you touch your pointer to your thumb. But it was the definition of crystal clear, flawless and transparent, with an oblong cavity maybe a centimeter to the interior glistening with liquid ruby. It didn't darken with oxidation because there was no oxygen except what was bound to the hemoglobin, didn't swirl because the vacuum had been completely filled. It did, however, pulse with Maka's Anti-Magic Wavelength like a tiny heart resonating within the crystalline matrix. Maka stretched her fingers against the chain to hold it open, inviting.
"Something as dark as me… shouldn't be allowed close to you," Crona whispered, staring into her eyes through the loop. "We're designed to destroy one another. Maybe you can control yourself outside of the Madness, but what if I can't? What if I-"
"That doesn't matter," she said firmly, looking right back with hard emerald eyes, like reaching her outstretched hands into the black void of his soul, searching the tar for the person she loved and willing him back to the surface. And there, on the very tips of her fingers, she felt him brush her skin, reaching back.
"Doing something you want to do, that's all that matters now. So what d'ya say Crona? Will you come back to me? Will you come be with me?"
"You-" his breath caught in his throat, his face creasing in a frown, and for a fleeting moment Maka was afraid he was going to attack her. He didn't. Instead he dipped his head, breath fast and shallow through his nose, wire taut.
"You'll have to either stand back or hold me down. My body will reject this at first and I don't know what will happen when it does. Still… you have to do it now, before the Madness-"
"I understand," she cut him off with both her words and her actions.
Closing the last few inches of space between them, Maka slid the chain over his bowed head, positioned the pendant in the soft spot beneath his sternum, and then wrapped her arms around him. One encircled his waist, pressing his body into hers, and the other cradled his head, her fingers knotting in his pink locks as she positioned his face in the curve between her neck and shoulder. For a beat nothing happened and she was both certain everything was back to normal and terrified it hadn't worked at all. Then Crona screamed, loud and inhuman, straining against her as the walls of the cave trembled and what remained of the glassware exploded into dust. Maka held fast, wincing as the vibrations tore through her body, rupturing her eardrums and bringing forth more ruby red blood which ran down her earlobes and neck. The Black Blood mobilized, hardening against her, thorny vines crawling beneath his skin, threatening to tear through them both.
Maka closed her eyes and braced, refusing to let him go even now, and Crona, as best he could, resisted. His teeth found the fleshy part above Maka's collarbone and dug in, his arms curling around her back like a vise. She cried out, feeling his jaw tighten and start to break the skin through her trench coat. The wound where his vine had pierced her before stretched and tore under the strain, bleeding again into the bandage. He could taste her blood in his mouth, feel her frail body bend just as he felt her brilliant resolve warming what had become frozen, then moisten what had become dry. Just a little more.
Dust rained down all around them as the thorns thrashed against the stone ceiling and walls, like the fingernails of someone being dragged across a wooden floor. Reluctantly they returned to his black hem, melting back into his body, then back into his mind. Caged once more. Maka clung to his waist and hair, but Crona's limbs were hard and unyielding, constricting, trying to break her. Her lungs squirmed in her chest, unable to fill properly under the pressure of Crona's grip. And just as she felt the lightheadedness was about to steal her consciousness itself, it was over.
Marble became flesh once more, warm and soft and suddenly limp. Gasping and unprepared for the weight, Maka sank with him into the dirt, kneeling and still refusing to let go. Her ears rang with the aftermath of his choice, her shoulder was wet with blood and saliva, and yet through the haze and pain she felt something else. It was Crona, Crona's soul in perfect resonance with hers, Crona's heart beating against her chest. She felt a vibration in his body, then a second, then he wiggled away from her. Lethargically and only a little, just enough to look her in the face. He was panting, the secondary ring in his irises not quite fully expanded, giving his eyes a distinctive spectrum: large black pupils surrounded by ice blue with a thick, storm cloud grey rim. Tired but attentive nevertheless. Traces of her red blood smudged his face, mostly around his mouth, and his pale skin was damp with perspiration. His lips moved and, though she heard nothing but the ringing, she still felt tears burn her eyes and a giggle of sheer joy boil over in her aching throat because she could read his lips.
"What I want is to be with you. I love you, Maka, and I will always choose to be with you."
