"Soul," Maka gasps, spying those familiar tufts of spiky, albino hair a mile away. "You're here," she tries and fails to keep the smile out of her voice. "I… I wasn't sure if you were coming," she explains.

"Ah… sorry," he replies sheepishly. The look on her face tugs one of the sides of his mouth upwards. "I got caught up in some crap with Stein, I guess and some others..."

She pats the ground next to her, inviting him to come and join her watch the sun setting over the desert. He hesitates, and then decides to follow her lead, sitting down and stretching his legs over the soft grass. She absently fiddles with some of it in her left hand, plucking an errant daisy from the soil and twirling it between her fingers. "Are you… okay?" she broaches the elephant in the room, a little hesitantly.

He sighs. "Yes," he replies, his voice a little hoarse. He looks very tired, she notices.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you, I just… I just…" she tries, attempting to find the right words. Soul holds his hand up to silence her before she gets there.

"It's fine, Maka."

Neither of them says anything for a while, and then she feels his hand reach out; land softly on top her hers. She breathes a little sigh of relief at the gesture. "I missed you, earlier."

"I needed to cool off," he rubs his head, sheepish.

"Yeah, me too, probably. I still came here, though."

Silence again.

"The only reason that I got so annoyed is because… I don't want you to leave. I want you to stay here. With me. You know that," she tells him, her voice earnest as her brows knit together in concern. "Why are you still acting so strangely?"

"I-I'm not," he stammers. "It's fine."

She clenches her jaw and pulls her hand away from his. "What's wrong? You are still mad at me, aren't you?" she groans in frustration. "Why didn't you just say? We can sort it out-"

"No, Maka," he says through his teeth. "I'm… sad."

She blinks at him, confused. "You're sad."

"Yes…"

There's a beat, and the penny drops.

"You're still leaving," she repeats tonelessly, her face falling blankly. "You're still leaving."

"…yeah," he admits, gritting the words out. "Maka, you have to understand-"

"When?" she says bluntly, interrupting him. She feels her eyes stinging. "Just tell me, so at least I can say goodbye," she sighs.

He looks at her, his expression soft yet sad. He doesn't need to say, but he looks back at the sunset. There's a look of grim determination about him that she hasn't seen in a while, and her heart sinks.

"Tonight, then?"

"Yeah."

Another wave of horrible silence descends down upon them. Soul reaches out to hold her hand again, but she doesn't hold it back. Her hands are limp, lifeless. He doesn't turn to look at her, but he hears her lean back on the grass, onto her back. He continues to stare off into the sunset, his chest full of the thoughts and feelings that he's never been any good at saying.

"Hey, remember back in Colorado? When we found that random lake," he says, out of nowhere. "I think that was… one of the coolest memories. Just bathing in that lake. I think you said that was your first bath in months, or something?" he smiles, basking briefly in the memory.

She sniffs, a strangled noise coming out of her nose. "For fuck's sake, Soul," she replies, almost whispering.

He ignores her. "What about you?"

She thinks for a second. Part of her wants to burst into tears, and the other part wants to slap him around the face until he decides that he doesn't want to leave her after all, but she doesn't do either of these things. She's Maka Albarn, daughter of Kami and Spirit Albarn, and she's strong, dammit.

So she takes a deep breath, and she sucks it up.

"I remember hanging out at that weird mall for a few days. Jesus, we played so many stupid games, that was fun," she lets herself smile a little. "Shopping cart mall luge was probably a personal highlight." A giggle escapes her at the memory of the grown man in front of her, holding his knees to his chest as he barrelled down the mall at about 60 miles per hour in a metal cage designed for[K1] shopping.

"Not all the times you beat me at weird giant chess?"

She laughs. "Oh, yeah! We kept saying that we were going to play again, when we found a real chess set. Isn't there one around here, somewhere?"

He chuckles. "Way too asymmetrical for Kid, I'm afraid. Stein probably has one, he's the kind of loser who actually plays chess for fun…" he waits for Maka to shove him, but the shove never comes.

"Hah, yeah…" she trails off, her mind playing the scene back to her. "Ooh, what about the wine cellar? In that massive house?"

He groans. "I could have lived down there, seriously," he bemoans. He pulls a cardboard carton of cigarettes from his pocket and plucks one of them out, placing it into his mouth. "This will have to suffice," he says, before lighting it and taking a large inhale.

"You're still smoking?" she wrinkles up her nose in disgust. "I haven't seen you do that since we've been here," she points out.

He shrugs. "It's looked down upon, I guess." He takes another breath in and Maka watches the pretty tendrils disappear into the night sky from the tip of the lit cigarette. "So," he starts, leaning back on his right hand again. "What's your favorite memory, then?"

She grins. "Do you remember that time you took me hunting?"

He frowns, taking another drag. "Really? Was that so special?"

"Well, I guess not," she shrugs. "I guess I'm probably looking back at it with rose-tinted glasses. But it was nice, just the two of us… surviving. You know?"

He snorts derisively and doesn't answer her.

"So…" she starts. "What's yours, then?"

His eyes flicker up and meet hers, finally. "Hot springs, no contest."

She's surprised. "How come?"

"You know how come, idiot," he rolls his eyes, prompting a brief smile. She reaches forward, just far enough to plant the lightest kiss on his lips and then her face turns down again.

"It sucks that th-this is the last time we'll see each other…"

"Don't say that, Maka," he reacts quickly; irritated. He doesn't want to think that way himself, let alone hear Maka thinking that way.

"Well, then, what am I supposed to say?"

He runs a hand through his hair. "Let's… not say anything else, alright?" he proposes. "Let's just enjoy the sunset."

She agrees, partly out of the sense that she doesn't really know the proper way to deal with this situation – neither of them knew how to navigate this, really. They were just kids, like Tsubaki had said. All of them were just kids in over their head, really.

She holds his hand, lacing her fingers so they're intertwined with his. She grips onto his hand so tightly that by the time a few minutes have passed, she's lost feeling in most of her fingers but she still holds on. She's not ready to say goodbye, not just yet. Not to the only good thing that had happened to her since this whole damn virus had ruined the earth; not to the only person she's ever really been able to fully trust, other than her parents.

They stay on the hill long enough to watch the sun make its inevitable journey below the horizon, and a little while longer. When the wind starts turning cold, they both finally have to acknowledge that it's probably time to split.

Standing up, Maka is suddenly glad that it's dark, because her eyes begin to spill over with tears. "I guess we'd better go, huh?" he says, his voice reduced to something else entirely; some faint echo of himself. He sounds reluctant, at least.

"Yeah," her voice is reduced to nothing but a faint tendril. "I…I…"

He reaches up; kisses her on the forehead briefly, cutting off whatever she was trying to say to him. Her heart swells in her chest for the split second that he's touching her.

By the time she opens her eyes again, he's turned away and walking down the hill – away from her.

"Goodbye, Soul," she whispers after him, out of earshot.

She lets herself cry softly for a couple of minutes, despite her own pride. If she'd learned anything about Soul from the last few months, if was that he was a man of his word. If he said he was leaving, he really was leaving for good. Knowing this full well, she has every single negative emotion in her body all at once - letting them all out slowly as she sobs them into the licks of grass she's now kneeling in.

But Maka's never been much for weeping.

After only a minute or so, something else begins to to set into her system.

Her feelings for Soul aside, she was an Albarn. She was her mother - no, she was stronger than her mother. If it killed her, she was going to get stronger.

If she's going to stay here, and not give in to her worst temptations and go with Soul - then she doesn't want to waste that opportunity.

All the horrible pent-up emotions that she never fully explored; the feeling of unease at being in an unfamiliar place; the awful inkling that she'll never see him again... she's going to make it all worth her time.

"I'm going to do it," she whispers to herself. And she means it.

She was going to make herself the best damn meister that this school had ever seen.

:(