Readers... remember, I love you.

Stein slowed to a stop, the door only opened a crack but the lights a dead give away. He resisted a sigh before pressing it the rest of the way open. "Maka, you're here late."

"I just had a few more things to do with the Arachne case." Why Maka was even bothering to lie was beyond her, especially as Stein's eyes ran easily along her desk, noting the closed files.

"Let me drive you home."

Maka let the order settle before she stood, slowly grabbing her jacket off the back of her chair and arranging in anticipation for the cold. She sucked in air as she buttoned, trying to bolster herself against that flimsy feeling, the one that had been wheedling its way in after Soul had left. Could you even deny what he said? And will you be able to hold onto this anger when you get home and see him?

Stein did not fill the silence with small talk, just patiently producing breaths as Maka readied. As soon as she was past him, Stein was shutting the door behind them, then following in slow footsteps as Maka made her way down the staircase to the lower lobby. He waited, absorbing the tension that came off her in waves, a common occurrence that he'd become well adjusted to over the years of knowing Maka and her father before her. A cough in the chill was the only thing to pass between the two of them as they exited the building to cross the street to the parking garage. Stein had the pleasure of a ground floor designated spot so the walk in the frost was short before they reached the confines of the car.

Maka settled but as Stein started the engine he left the car in part, a deep breath parting his lips. "You're doing an excellent job on the Arachne case."

"Thank you," Maka offered him a small smile.

"And I understand that Detective Sergeant Evans has been very helpful with this."

"Stein-"

"I'm not admonishing you," Stein corrected as he eased his hands onto the steering wheel. "I think your partnership has done a lot of good."

Maka pulled in a warbling breath, "But…"

"After this," Stein offered with cool finality, "I believe that you should allow Evans to take the Lieutenant position."

"Allow?" Maka echoed with a mocking laugh. "Marie couldn't find him a position, he's been waiting, he's-"

Stein's eyebrows twitched as he turned his head to her, "I assumed you knew."

"Knew what?" Maka spat as her hands clutched tightly into her bag.

"Ah," Stein said slowly as he breathed out a sigh and brought his eyes back over the dashboard. "I see."

"See what?" Maka's shriek increased an octave.

"Perhaps you have some time to discuss things with Marie," Stein's voice was lower, stripped of strength.

Maka's fingers trembled with the strain as she dug them into the fabric, "Please."

"Call him and tell him-"

"No," Maka snapped.

Stein sighed as he fished his phone out of his pocket and scrolled through before pressing a button.

"Stein?" Soul's voice strained just two rings in. "Where's Maka?"

"Here, one moment," Stein intoned calmly as he held the phone out between them.

Maka met his eyes, staring him down firmly as Soul's voice senselessly tinned from the tiny speaker.

"Maka, take the phone." It was the voice he used with their nonsensical five-year-old since the fit in front of him struck him as such.

She grasped the phone, holding it just barely to her ear.

"Listen, are you OK? Do you need me to come get you?"

"I'm fine," Maka tried to refuse the tremble in her voice, adopting Stein's even tone.

"You don't sound fine," he shot back. "Why is Stein calling for you anyway?"

"I'm going to stay with Marie tonight."

The pause sat heavily, a surety that the line had broken coming until Soul's whisper barely trickled into her ear. "Why?"

The bitterness slid over her tongue as the words expelled from her mouth. "Is there something you think you should tell me?"

"Maka…" just her name drifted over the line.

"Maybe something you don't want Marie to tell me?" she spat again.

A second, desperate pause shifted over the line before a sigh trembled through. "Whatever she tells you is the truth."

Which means you're a liar. Maka crushed it, feeling the words dig talons into her heart. "I'll be home tomorrow."

"Maka, come on-"

"Unless you have something to tell me right now, Soul, then I'll be home tomorrow."

"Fine." The mutter finished with a sharp click.

Her hand was on the way to jerking away, throwing the phone when Stein grabbed it. "Maka, do not let that anger consume you."

"He's a liar." Maka wanted that to be a hissing scrape but it fluttered from her lips as more of a desperate howl.

Stein sighed, "Refrain from your assumptions until you speak with Marie. I'm afraid my information is second-hand, so what I've made the mistake of saying so far is slightly more nuanced than I think you're assuming." But the rationality of it all plunked uselessly against her ears and Stein saw her set like stone in the seat next to him. He huffed out a second breath, sure Marie would kill him.

Marie was happily listening to Ben blab about every moment of his day as his little fingers dug around her leg. He'd just reached a particular crescendo with a playground story when his darling little peeping froze, instead a gush of air swarming his mouth so he could scream, "Aunt Maka!"

"Oh, Maka," Marie's smile blossomed until she laid eyes on Stein, his face fitting stiffly into his mask. "Frank, Ben hasn't had his bath yet."

"Mama, it's too early!" Ben whined as he hugged Maka's middle. "And Aunt Maka-"

"Will be here all night," Marie finished over his droning cry. "So let Papa give you your bath a little early and then you'll have more time with Aunt Maka."

That seemed to placate the little boy as he grabbed his father, forcing him out of the kitchen to speed up the process. "Marie, I'm sorry…" Maka took a hesitant step, some of the fire left behind in the car.

"Ben's the only one who'll want an apology," Marie shrugged as she turned back to the stove. "But from the look on your face, I'm going to guess I'm right - you're staying the night?"

"If you don't mind," she murmured back as she took an exhausted seat at the island, leaning into the cool granite.

"Of course not," Marie chimed as she fiddled with another pot, trying to formulate the next question.

Maka preempted her with a soft sigh, "Marie, I need you to tell me the truth."

"About what?" Though she could almost certainly guess, all of the questions starting with Soul Evans.

"Did you have a Lieutenant position for Soul?"

Marie turned off the burners in defeat before she turned to slump against the safety of the counter. "Yes."

"He lied to me," Maka exploded as she put her hands into her hair, tugging at the roots. "He told me that there was nothing available, that you promised to keep looking, and that he'd wait for you to find something but he's a liar."

"A white lie," Marie answered with a sigh.

"Stein said-"

"Oh, Frank," Marie groaned to cut Maka off. "Frank knows half of it. You know none of it, so stop, Maka. You came here for answers, so sit and I'll tell you them."

Maka froze under the mother's scolding, the only movement her hands falling out of the mess of her hair.

"I had a position ready for Soul at another precinct," Marie watched those words tear into Maka, that tender heart breaking in front of her. "I offered it to him and he refused. Soul's never forthcoming about much of anything but this was the first time he ever offered me an actual explanation." Using the counter as leverage, Marie pushed off, bringing her a few steps so she could reach to arrange the hair around Maka's face. "I won't repeat his explanation, that's his, but I'll repeat my reaction to it: He loves you, Maka. He loves you desperately and wants to make sure you don't leave him because you are what he has. He doesn't need to be a Lieutenant, he doesn't need notoriety or fame, all he needs is you and that's driven him to make sure nothing ever changes."

"I don't understand," warbled weakly from Maka's lips.

"Yes, you do," Marie sighed, "and I want you to spend tonight thinking about how much you do know because I'll tell you the same thing I told him: neither of you is moving forward, and it can't be a happy place for you or for him. I love you like a daughter, Maka, and Soul may as well be another pain in the ass son, but both of you need a change. You can't keep living like this."

"I know," she murmured as she slumped into the counter, letting her head rest on her arms to hide the way her face crinkled.

With one last sweet swoop of her hand over Maka's hair, Marie left her, turning back to the stove and finishing the necessaries for dinner. It wasn't long before the pitter-pattering of tiny, footy-pajamaed feet broke into the kitchen, bringing Maka out of her tears and back into reality.

"Why are you crying?" Ben asked the most logical question in his arsenal as Maka lifted him into her lap.

"I don't know, Ben," Maka murmured.

"You have to ask the right questions!" He floated the suggestion like it was the best fit but Maka only wrinkled her eyebrows in reply. "Like if you don't know something - you ask, right, Mama?"

"Yes, Ben," Marie added a laugh. "Remember, Ben, sometimes our questions don't have answers."

"Right," Ben turned to parrot it back at Maka, "sometimes our questions don't have answers."

"What do you do then?" Maka forced a smile between her lips.

Ben floundered, looking to his mother but then quickly to his father. "Papa, what was it again?"

Stein placed a steady hand on Maka's shoulder, bringing her slightly stunned eyes to his. "Then maybe it means we have to do the thinking or the talking."

You have to ask, her mind urged. You have to ask or you'll never know. And even if you don't get your answer, you have some talking to do of your own, don't you?

While he had tried to go home and sleep, it was all an impossible dream for Soul. Not only had that exchange in her office tightly wound bloody twine around his heart but then the added insult of her phone call had just twisted it another notch, leaving him mangled.

You had something to tell her right now, you complete asshole.

And now you're a liar.

A fucking liar.

And the next time she sees you, what are you going to say?

I love you, so I didn't take the job.

I love you, so I lied and said there wasn't anything out there.

I love you, so I just keep making one colossal fuck-up after another because I'm just a pathetic coward.

I run from my career, from my mom, from you.

A pathetic fucking coward.

So that pathetic coward didn't sleep. He sat on the couch, staring at the light changing from dusk to midnight to dawn. When the sun rose he called out, hearing Marie's hearty sigh at his flimsy excuse. He desperately wanted to ask her what the exchange with Maka had been, what truths had been told, but he hung up almost instantly after the sound. He had picked up the phone about eighty times after that, finger hovering over her contact or flipping to their texts to find nothing new. He gave up at about 4 PM, slunk to the fridge, and started on a beer.

He was on his third when the door clicked open, the disintegration of his gut planting him firmly on the couch. Her footsteps clattered in the hallway, along with the sound of her bag flopping to the floor, before slow feet brought her to the doorway.

"Did we…" The words were giant on her tongue, a crushing weight that she was sure she didn't have the mental or physical strength to express.

Soul didn't seem to notice the hardship, just raising his eyebrows slightly as he tipped back his beer again. The suction popped off his bottom lip perfectly in the silence.

Maka tried to find the right place for her hands first, knowing her hips would send a message but finding the alternative of clutching onto herself for dear life was too desperate looking. She opted for strange jazz hands at her sides. "Did we - was the other day… a date?"

Of all the reactions Maka expected, this fit none of them. Soul's hand went to his face before pulling it through his hair with the most miserable sigh she'd witnessed breaking his lips. "Fuck…"

"Then, that's a no," she shot out quickly. Her heart was a tiny bird thudding against her ribs and with all her might she was urging her feet to run but they betrayed her, planting her stiffly to drown in the quicksand of her own heartbreak.

Another sigh escaped before he downed a good portion of his beer. He slammed the bottle on the side table. "It's not that…" Without the bottle as a distraction, he dedicated another tug to his hair with both hands, leaving his head to rest there long enough to collect his thoughts. At least this seemed normal, the stoic build-up of words that usually haunted any serious conversation they ever had. When his eyes finally slunk to hers she could barely contain her surprise because the first thing she could read off of them was nothing but pain. "Maybe I kind of already thought we were."

"Dating?" Maka offered as if that clarified the millions of other questions she had.

His lips pressed into a flat frown, "Yeah."

Her pouty bottom lip, one of his usual favorite things to watch, floundered uselessly between possible questions. Those nervous hands betrayed her and grabbed at her own elbows across her stomach to hold herself together. The silence was agonizing but the next words from his lips made her wish for it again.

A frightening finger popped from his clenched fist. "How long have we known each other?"

"Sophomore year in high school," Maka answered quickly, relieved by the easy question but that dissolved as soon as another finger released to join the first.

"When's the first time we had sex?"

Maka tried to make the nervous groan that broke from her throat sound like a thoughtful hum. "Right after graduation."

His flat affect faltered for a second as he let out a weak laugh, "You took my virginity in the back of that shitty Volvo you used to drive after ditching Blake's stupid bonfire. Thought that was the best fucking night of my life." He cleared his throat and tucked that away as he produced another finger. "How long before we moved in together?"

Here she had to pause, fighting with herself over her own questions. Did you rethink that best night of your life? The intermission didn't break the intensity in his eyes and Maka gave in. "A few months after that, when we started college. But we didn't… we weren't sleeping together."

"Nah," he rolled his shoulders weakly. "And we didn't talk about what we did, but you talked me into this." He momentarily opened his hand to showcase the apartment before going back to his disappearing fist, leaving just his thumb across his palm. "How many people have you dated since?"

"Since when?" she tried to deflect.

"Really?" he sucked his teeth. "I was going to say since you fucked me the first time but how about since you and I met. How about that?"

"None," she grumbled softly.

"Same." His admission blew hers out of the water, firmly drawing a line that amped that fluttering feeling in her chest back up to a fury. The last finger splayed, leaving his open hand between them. "And when did you start fucking me regularly?"

"Could you stop calling it that?" Maka spat but she could barely hold onto the anger, feeling it instead bring pinpricks of tears to her eyes.

"What do you want me to call it?" Soul snapped back without skipping a beat, his eyes flecked with that strange pain again.

There was a floodgate that she was holding closed white-knuckled and the strain was nearly impossible. She felt the water slipping through her fingers. "We just started having sex, OK? You and I started having sex when we wanted to for the past few years."

"When you wanted to," he corrected as he smacked the open hand on top of his knee, letting it clench into the skin.

There was nothing to hold on to anymore, cracks in just about everything she had been trying to keep steady leaving her no hope but to throw her hands up in the air. "Then why would you even assume we were dating? If it's just me fucking you then what about that screams dating?"

His jaw clenched as his head bobbed nervously, "Don't take this the wrong way but I just… I assumed this was how you were, how this kind of thing went with you. I thought, maybe, it was just you being a little cold, distant because-"

Her incredulous laugh cut him off, "How the fuck do I not take that the wrong way? What? I'm a bitch? I'm just some ice-queen but you lived with it because I'd fuck you? I'll have you know that I'm good to my friends, I love my friends, I'm warm and fucking caring to my friends." Forget the pinpricks as they had become full burning trails of tears down her cheeks.

Soul sighed, "That's not what I said."

"A little cold, distant," she started to mock his voice.

Soul broke over it in a shout, a decibel that she wasn't sure she'd heard from him before, "Because you're fucking wounded, Maka. You're broken as fucking hell. Between your mom and your dad, you can't bear to let anyone get close enough to you, not in the romantic fucking way. So, yeah, your friends you treat well, but someone who wants to be with you?" His hand flourished again, stirring up the entire moment and wafting it back at her.

Maka broke a step towards him, letting her yell fall wildly in his face. "Then why the fuck did you bother to stay?"

The distance allowed him to grab at her wrist, keeping her trapped in her threat. All of her nerve suddenly melted away as his eyes bore into her, his lip trembling as he formed the words slowly and carefully since they came from a place far hidden away without much practice. "Because I love you. I fell in love with you probably the day we fucking met and I can't do a damn thing about it. And even though it fucking kills me some days, I don't think I want to do anything about it. I make this work because I don't want the alternative. And since I'm being totally, brutally honest, I keep doing it because I think you're fucking worth it."

Soul stood, capturing her other wrist in his other hand, pinning and keeping her in front of him. "So, a date, Maka? What do you call the shit we do every Friday night? We already do that. But you know what I'd like? To fucking make love to you once in a while instead of just feeling like you're blowing off steam. To not have to ask if you'll sleep in my bed tonight and just find you there because I like that. And maybe for you to realize that I've been trying to prove that I can be fucking responsible with your heart and that I'm not ever going to hurt you, leave you."

Why that hit her like a stab to the gut was something her mind wouldn't let process, instead too busy forcing her feet to move, cracking against the hardwood floor in frantic steps back. She expected his hold to tighten but with red eyes bruised with pain, she felt him let go, those fingers that she knew so well just drifting over the tops of her hands. "I…" she started but the way he let his gaze turn back to the couch told her she'd already misstepped, already ruined it and there was no hope but to watch the two of them crash and burn. The silence birthed nothing else except for the repeated sound of her feet against the floor, crashing into shoes, the shuffle of her bag, and the slam of the door.

Every letter in every word came back as a disjointed cacophony even as the night air tried to shock Maka back to reality. A scrambling hand was weaving through her bag but even as it closed over her cellphone the message came loud in clear through the shouts, Who the hell are you going to call? The answer to that was nothing more than a lance to the heart as she crossed the street, edging further into the darkness that hid away the entrance to the parking deck. There was no plan but she brought the phone out, almost gasping in shock as it instantly started buzzing in her hand, Soul's name and a stupid image of the two of them just reopening the wound that wasn't anywhere close to closing to begin with.

She forced the screen dark but kept the vibration as a reminder, a strange anchor to her foolishness, her ineptitude. The keys were the next necessary item and she barely hooked them with the phone still clutched in her fingers. With her other hand, she hit the button that illuminated the front lights and gave the familiar click of the lock. Maka threw herself into the seat, slamming the door, and pressed her forehead against the steering wheel. It wasn't enough to unleash the horn but enough to give a chill to her face that was threatened by the hot tears on her cheeks. And while she tried to push it away, the only memory that would come to her was the worst of all.

"Soul, please," it was the weakest whisper but it came as a shout in the empty room, its only competition the myriad of beeps from the many machines the man in question was plugged into.

It was the first time they were alone, between the whirlwind of cops and detectives to the doctors and nurses - the surgeries and the statements. All of that had created a limbo, a space in between where Maka could pretend it was all one neverending nightmare, a cursed echo of reality rather than their life. Now, with only the steady tones that broadcasted his vitals, Maka had to wake from the dream and see the moment for what it really was. She had almost and still could lose him.

"I'm sorry," she murmured as she pressed her cheek against his hand, the only thing she could get close to in the mess of wires and gadgetry keeping him alive. "I shouldn't have let him in. I shouldn't have even opened the door. I should have been home, with you, not making you worry and come to the office. I should have… I should have…" she had a million more but her voice broke under the weight of it. She pressed her tears into his skin which was usually a blazing comfort of warmth but now felt clammy and cold.

"I'll do anything, just wake up," she choked. "I know I can't make you keep your promise but I need you to. I need you so much. I love you." The words were alien but the only thing that eased even a second of the pain. So she breathed them over and over again into his palm, a tiny prayer that she hoped would reach his heart.

With her eyes forced shut, the tears still streaming under the rims, Maka clutched at the steering wheel, banishing the picture from her mind. I need to go back. I can't run from this like I ran after that moment. He said what I wanted, what I always wanted to hear and-

The click interrupted her thoughts, the sudden rush of cold air in the cabin. She couldn't even turn her head in time, a hand grabbing into her hair and dragging her out on the concrete.