Author's Note: And after a solid month of debilitating depression I think I'm finally feeling better. Wrote this at any rate. My hope is that I can keep up the momentum and use some of my more recent, not super pleasant experiences to inform my writing. But I'm also experiencing some computer trouble which may yet cause me problems. Hopefully not problems on the scale of my longest update times, but figured I should be communicative. Any who, thank you for your patronage and for bearing with me. I know I'm not the most prolific writer, but I do hope you're all enjoying the story.
"Yeah, okay, so I was here," Soul said, settling Stein precisely in the arm chair next to the hospital screen.
"And then she," he moved to Vera's side just a little too quickly to be as calm as he pretended. "Appeared right here. Not solid, like she was made of water or something, but she was right here. She touched her hand…"
Soul paused for a moment, repeating that motion too. His fingers skated across her room temperature flesh, the fine hairs and the wrinkled knuckles, then off her hard fingertips. Her nails weren't growing, her hair wasn't growing, she was hardly breathing. Her… mind, if that was it, had been torn from both her body and soul and she owed her survival to the Black Blood freezing like arctic fish blood inside her. When was she coming back? And what-
"Then what," Stein pressed, fingering a cigarette suggestively even as Naigus glared from across the room. Soul withdrew his hand and continued, turning to face Stein head-on.
"Then she said "The anguish of the swan is in her hands" and that she was having a weird dream."
"Interesting," mused Stein, cupping his face with one hand and putting the cigarette back into his front pocket with the other. He didn't say anything else for a long while, long enough to fray Soul's nerves.
"What's interesting," he finally snapped. "What does it mean? She was here, so that's good isn't it? What happens next?"
"Did you experience anything during that time or just before? Anything physical?"
"Yeah actually," Soul responded slowly with a nod. "My scar was acting up a little. Nothing serious, just like when Crona gets enthused about something."
"Interesting."
More silence.
"Wanna be a little more specific," Soul asked through gritted teeth, actively tamping the frustration in his chest down into a manageable pile.
"I can't say until Crona gets back, nothing for certain at any rate. But since you want answers now, the event which caused your scar to hurt may've had a similar effect on Vera. Since she's only successfully astral projected using the Black Blood, you could argue that it tethers her astral form to her body. If that is indeed the case, then Crona's work may yet hold the key to Vera's recovery. At this point, however, I would not get your hopes too high. The fact that she appeared before you but didn't return to her body suggests she is still quite lost on the astral plane."
"Don't get my hopes up, huh," he repeated, giving Vera's face a mournful smile and a head shake. "Not cool."
Stein, sensing the conversation was finished, pushed himself out of the arm chair and started to head back to his lab. At the door he paused, considering something. Soul was… upset. He had developed a close relationship with Vera during the Pendra incident. He was probably worried about her in this comatose state. A tiny Marie in his head scolded him gently and urged him to say something. Sometimes people who are upset need kindness and just a tinge of excess optimism. Surely there was something he could say that would be both comforting and true.
"Soul," he spoke so suddenly the scythe almost jumped. "She was here, and that is good. Be patient for a little while longer; if the answer really is in the Black Blood we're sure to find it."
Soul frowned at him, first evaluating his veracity with a critical stare, and then finally nodding in acceptance, grinning just a little.
"Come on, Professor, a cool guy like me? And Maka's partner? I'm a master of patience."
I will not be my sister. That is the promise I have made to myself: I will not become Arachne. Or our mother for that matter, the woman who birthed the spider, the serpent, and the scorpion. Venomous creatures, predators all three. But I reject that fate, I denounce it, and I, Medusa, will prevent it.
How, though, is far more complex than a simple denouncement.
Let's get the obvious stated. Yes, I could never use magic. However, I am a witch, to reject magic is to reject my own being. All the wonderful things I could accomplish, positive things, good things. I am not content to sit on the sidelines of history and simply watch the world unfold unchallenged. That is not in my nature and there is so much that can be done with magic to combat all the evil in this world. Evil like my sister's intent. Besides, there is nothing to say the Pull is a result of using magic and not an artifact of my own body. I am not so naïve that I will take such a chance. Nor will I risk little Shaula's safety around my experiments.
So now we have established that I, being only myself, shall use magic on this quest. Now to define the quest. I should've opened with that definition, an objective. No matter, to say I am already a master of science would be hubris. I am just a student, a student that hopes to negate the Pull. A student that doesn't want to destroy anything… well, perhaps that is not entirely true. The natural order dictates that I, as a witch, must be consumed by the Pull and become a force of destruction. Thus, and perhaps ironically, it is the natural order that I seek to destroy. That which would dictate my fate shall crumble in the face of my retribution.
There is one substance, a universal curative, which I came across in my sister's texts, before she decided to take them and herself out of our lives. It seemed to be pure myth, this Panacea, except my sister also gathered tomes from other dead witches who sought a kind of power source. Each of these witches found in one source or another reference to an artificial, magical fungus that is meant to have the power to create or enhance any ailment. The fact that all who sought this fungus never returned to claim their research speaks to how deadly it must be. However, in venoms we discover anti-venoms and in poisons we find remedies. I think the fungal treasure and the Panacea are one in the same, that a magical construct capable of such toxicity may also hold the key to curing the most unconventional afflictions. I think that if I am to have any prayer of overcoming the Pull it is with the Panacea.
Crona leaned his elbow on the desk, bringing his nose closer to what had to be Lady Medusa's very first journal. The flow of later entries was noticeably lacking, as if her mind hadn't yet learned to structure itself in experimental designs, and the details were a little… not detailed. He still had about a thousand questions that he just had to hope were answered somewhere later. But the spark, the voice of determination. The fledgling desire to create catastrophic change in the world. There was no doubt this was Lady Medusa, a young Lady Medusa, a Lady Medusa that sounded a lot like Crona. That should've scared him- would've scared him, except fear seemed so foreign just now…
The little chunk of Panacea had regained some of its luster over the past week since they'd been back. It felt perfectly smooth against his fingertips as he spun it around in his hand, and stone hard, with a structure of three, feathery, cylindrical components to a central body rather like a coral's construct. Beguiling its true nature, a luminescent piece of what other entries told him was a much larger mycelium for a much larger fungus. Fossilized, it seemed, but not yet dead. Though for an artificial magical entity, he wondered if "alive" was even applicable. He felt very sure that it was perfectly safe, regardless of the information he was receiving, and he felt this way based solely on the premise that this is how he felt. It was a feedback loop that lead him to be increasingly reckless with the Panacea's storage.
Lady Medusa had kept it in a jar wrapped in cloth, which was how he stored it on the first day. Then he'd worked with it out in the open, come to the conclusion that it was inert, and discarded the cloth. Without the cloth he could watch it regain its glow, that shimmer he'd found so captivating the first time he'd seen it, and without the cloth it seemed entirely natural that he should do so. Now he held it in his free hand, his fingers sliding across its smooth surface as he read. Concern that the Panacea might harm him was gone, and into the void where his skepticism should've been ideas were flowing.
He'd never felt so energetic and creative and focused all at the same time before. After only a week he had data coming out his ears, just measuring the effects the Panacea had on other magical items as they had no instrumentation that could detect anything coming from the Panacea itself. The notion that it might be affecting him too had not occurred to Crona. He hadn't thought to attribute this marked change in mood and behavior to the new acquisition. All he knew was that he felt amazing, he had exciting results, and for the first time since he'd started researching the Black Blood things seemed to be just coming together.
"Crona? You in there?"
"Maka," he barked in surprise, snapping the book closed, setting the Panacea fragment on the cover, and standing in one fluid motion.
"I'm sorry, am I early? You said to come by around five," she said sheepishly from the entryway, scoping out the wall clock above Crona's desk.
"I did? I mean yes, of course I did! You're not early; I was distracted. Do you need a coat? Ragnarok is always complaining about the cold."
"No, no I'm-" Crona took five big steps, grabbed her face, and kissed her enthusiastically on the mouth for a good ten seconds before he allowed her to finish. "Fine."
"I'm glad you're here," he said, leaning their foreheads together for a moment and grinning.
"I can tell," commented Maka, giggling a little at his antics and taking his hands in hers. "It's nice to see you too; I feel like it's been forever. Now, what is it you wanted to show me? You've seemed really excited."
"I am excited. Come over here, watch this."
He pulled her by the hand over to the table next to his desk, a modest set up that displayed a piece of greenish paper propped vertically between two posts, a screen made of pure iron, and a jar of liquid. Releasing Maka on arrival, Crona moved to a nearby shelf, retrieved what looked like a tiny rectangular vase maybe 5 cm tall and 1 cm across, a glass pipette with a bulb, and a wooden stand. She waited patiently for him to get set up, pulling clear liquid from the jar with the pipette and dispensing it into the tiny vase, noticing how he only touched the tiny vase with cloth.
"This is some of Professor Stein's soul-sucking water," Crona explained, keeping his back to her as he continued to maneuver all the pieces. "The magic is contained by the ceramic jar, so I've dispensed a little into this quartz cuvette. Now-"
"Why aren't you touching it," interrupted Maka, receiving an inquisitive half glance from Crona. "The cuvette."
"What? Oh! Fingerprints. The oils interfere with the measurement."
"I see, that makes sense. Thanks, sorry to stop you. Continue."
"I don't mind; not if it's you." He gave her another smile over his shoulder. "Anyway, the quartz cuvette doesn't block or alter the magical wavelength emitted by the water. So when we put it in front of the detector…"
Crona gently placed the cuvette on the wooden stand just in front of the greenish paper. The imprint of the quartz rectangle glowed brightly on the paper when he set it down, with a little halo of light showing the limited area of effect. Maka brought her hands up as if to clap but thought better of it, electing to just stay quiet and let Crona explain the glow.
"This paper was coated with an oil that lights up when exposed to magic. It's very short range and doesn't distinguish harmful magic from anything else, but it tells us when magic is present. When it lights up like that, that means there's a magical wavelength hitting it. Now this-" he gestured to the iron "is a wavelength filter. We built it special for the magical water, to make sure it's in calibration since we use it so much. There's a tiny space in there that's exactly half the magical wavelength of the soul-sucking water, so everything else gets reflected."
"So when you put that filter between the cuvette and the paper- the detector, if the water is emitting the wavelength it's supposed to emit, then the detector should light up?"
"Yes! Yes, that's exactly it Maka! And look, if we do that…" Crona moved the block and cuvette back a little and inserted the filter. "The detector keeps glowing. So this is normal soul-sucking water like we use all the time. But here's why I called you."
Using the cloth, Crona gently moved the cuvette off-center on the wooden stand. Then in total contrast to the care he'd used with the quartz, he reached in front of Maka, rolled the Panacea towards him with his fingertips, picked it up with his bare hand, and set it pressed against the cuvette. She was about to chide him for his carelessness, and for nearly upsetting the entire jar of soul-sucking water, when something more concerning caught her attention.
"It's not glowing anymore," she all but whispered, frowning. "The detector's stopped lighting up. What did you do?"
"It's the Panacea," he said, suddenly in a rush to retrieve it and return it to his desk. After a moment the detector glowed like before, granting Maka a little relief to her mounting concerns. "Proximity to the Panacea is what made the detector go dark, and not because it's shutting off the magic entirely. If we remove the filter then the glow would come back. No this is much more exciting, much more inspired. The Panacea affects the wavelength itself, it transforms it into something close but not quite the same. Like a redshift for the soul."
"I'm sorry," Maka held up her hands in an attempt to slow him down, shaking her pigtails and doing her best not to jump to any conclusions. "A redshift?"
"In a semiconductor," Crona started, smiling broadly and picking up a large hunk of crystal clear quartz from his desk. "When certain- certain metals- dopants- are added into the matrix, they change the optical properties of the material. Normally when one wavelength of energy, one color of light goes in, the same color comes out."
He used his long pointer finger to trace light from one edge of the crystal to the other, then made meaningful eye-contact with Maka. She nodded to show she was following, and tried to smile back. But something about this line of logic was making her insides twist, something about this redshifting business and the way it had excited Crona that made her sick.
"But when dopants are added, certain dopants, that's not what happens. The energy that goes in is- it's- it causes a split inside the crystal, the electron and it's hole, and when the electron and hole move and recombine a new wavelength is released. Like, umm, lights, LED lights. This is how those work." He traced a new line in the quartz, one that had a vertical jump in the middle of the crystal and exited from a higher plane. "When energy is lost during this process and the frequency of the wave decreases, that's a redshift, because the light becomes more red."
"The frequency of the wave," Maka repeated, no longer able to smile at him even though Crona himself was bursting with enthusiasm. "And therefore the wavelength. Like with the water."
"Yes! Yes, you see it!" Crona replaced the quartz on the desk and came over to her, grabbing her hands. "The soul, magic, and Madness all have wavelengths and our- all of our biology responds to those wavelengths. We've been so fixated on the proteins produced by magic that we never thought to consider the Pull as an artifact of a magical wavelength instead! If exposure to certain sounds can generate euphoria or trigger an instinctual anxiety, then why not magic? Same with Madness; we already know that at least some destructive behaviors are just the result of exposure to a Madness wavelength. But biology is highly specific; shifting these wavelengths just a little could negate the effects entirely!"
"And your soul," Maka asked, staring at their entwined hands and frowning. "What happens to your soul after this redshift? What happens to you?"
For a long moment there was silence, a stillness which became more uncomfortably brittle with every surge of the second hand. A quiet punctuated only by the tutting of the wall clock and yet filled with screams that were as yet unrealized. Maka bit her lip and kept her eyes on their hands, her body winding tighter and tighter with the tension she could feel building in his fingertips. Until Crona broke away, pulling his hands free of hers and moving back towards the desk. He leaned against it, back to her, shoulders hunched, and spoke to the computer monitor.
"It's no different from soul resonance. When we as weapons and meisters bring our souls into resonance we're changing our own soul wavelengths, we're shifting their frequencies."
"That is different," Maka insisted. "That's intentional, controlled by our own will, and temporary. You're talking about an artificial shift in your soul wavelength caused by a powerful magical artifact; that doesn't concern you even a little?"
"I thought you would be happy for me," he said in a low voice. "I thought you'd be excited."
"I am," she answered too quickly, pausing to rephrase and catching herself midstride on her way to the desk. "At least, I want to be. But Crona please think about it for a moment. It's a strain for us to modulate the frequencies of our souls and we only sustain the resonance for short bursts of time. Permanently changing the wavelength of someone's soul, it's never been thought of before, it could change the essence of who they are. Even if it's possible, even if that really is what this Panacea does, is it something that should be done in the first place? Why didn't Medusa use it if-"
"My mother," Crona cut her off, still refusing to turn around. "Didn't want it to work. By the time she found the Panacea she wasn't looking for a solution to the Pull anymore. At that moment and until the day she died all she was interested in was power. So don't bring her into this, don't use her to justify your fear of what you don't understand."
This time the silence was smoldering. Crona knew as soon as the words left his mouth that they were both unfair and cruel, and he curled downward in preparation for a retort that would no doubt be scalding. Maka, however, wasn't in the mood to snipe back. Her feelings were more akin to getting sucker punched in the gut than suffering an insult and she couldn't keep the tears from pricking at her eyes. But when she answered it was with a calm, weighted voice that hit harder than and outburst could've.
"You asked me to be honest with you. You made me promise that I would always be honest with you, especially about your work, especially when you did something that made me uncomfortable. What's gotten into you? I know your work is important and I respect that, but since you got back from Colorado it's like you're obsessed. And I have tried to be supportive but Crona, you're hardly home, you're missing class. You haven't been to see Vera once. Doesn't that bother you?"
She waited for almost a full, tortured minute, but Crona didn't so much as move. Sighing heavily through her nose, Maka wiped her eyes with the inside of her wrist and turned towards the door. When she reached the handle she looked back over her shoulder and added:
"You may think this Panacea is completely benign, but I can tell you right now it isn't. If you decide you're interested in my opinions again, you know where to find me."
And she left him, in even more silence. Heavy silence, oppressive silence, a silence so thick he had a hard time pushing his ribs out against it as he tried to breathe. But breathe he did, deep, shaky breaths as the gravity of what had just happened pressed in around him. They'd had fights before, or at least interactions that he found unpleasant enough to be classified as fights. Every couple, at some point or another, has fights. The inevitability of this outcome was the only way he could survive it, the knowledge that fighting was normal and part of loving someone. But this… they'd never left before the fight was resolved, before they'd bent and compromised and been happy with each other again. Not under any sort of normal circumstances, not when the world wasn't ending or a witch hadn't manipulated them into a situation. And never because of some callous thing he'd said.
Oh god what had he said.
It wasn't like him at all, none of this was. Maka was right, about all of it. He had been staying late in the lab, opting to press through some convoluted tome rather than go to class. When was he eating, and what? And Vera, he hadn't been to see her since they'd gotten back from Lady Medusa's lab. Not even for a moment, to see she was still there. How long had that been? He'd told himself this was for her, that he was looking for the way to bring her back too, and that wasn't a lie. But it didn't justify what he was doing. Nothing justified it, so why?
Crona picked up the Panacea, the mycelium with it's thick tubular core and feathery offshoots, and watched it wink at him. This eerie white light pulsating in its core, slow, hypnotic, a signal they didn't yet have the instrumentation to measure. Sometimes he'd spent hours just watching the light; he was aware enough to know that. In the moment he'd told himself he was thinking, and ideas did seem abundant afterward. Maka was right there too; it had seemed so benign. Yet now, as he looked, he felt for the first time a pull to keep looking. A compulsion that was entirely his own, or so it would seem. Was he not as in control as he felt? Were there effects at play he didn't understand and couldn't measure.
His own lack of fear was reason enough to be afraid. His remorse over having snapped at Maka was reason enough to go home now. Crona had to say he was sorry, he had to tell her he did value her opinions- he needed them, to cover his blind spots. Of which he obviously had a sizable one when it came to this Panacea. So he returned the glowing mass to it's jar and screwed the lid on tightly. He shut down the instruments that didn't need to run continuously and turned out the lights. And finally, later than he should've and wondering how he was going to ask for forgiveness, he started on his way home.
"Just where have you been?"
Soul jumped as he opened the door, not even making it past the threshold and into their apartment before the bombardment of criticism was unleashed upon him. She was always irritated when he came home after seven on days when he was supposed to cook dinner, but Maka must've had a pretty rotten day herself to be coming at him this quickly. He held off on any comments until he was inside, rolling his eyes while his back was turned to her as he locked the door. When he chose to face her it was with a placating grin and an even tone.
"At Black Star's playing video games."
"Seriously, playing video games?"
"Yes, video games. This isn't a new thing Maka."
"Do you have any idea what time it is?"
"Yes I know the time."
"And the day?"
"Holy crap Maka! Yeah, I know I'm late for dinner! It was an accident, we lost track of time, and I'm sorry. There, you happy?"
Maka pouted at him from the couch, holding her knees to her chest and peering sideway's through her loose hair. Then she slid her gaze back to the blank TV screen and outright scowled.
"No," she answered morosely, shifting her weight.
"Wanna talk about it," offered Soul, moving into the kitchen and washing his hands in preparation. He noted the elephant in the room, or rather, the lack of one, but tactfully chose not to comment.
"No."
Soul nodded to himself skeptically, rinsed off three potatoes and two large carrots, and started chopping. He went slowly, keeping the strokes quiet. Waiting.
"I didn't do anything wrong!" Her outburst was louder than expected, but didn't surprise him. "Crona made me promise I would be honest with my opinions on his work; he has no right to be upset with me for doing that!"
"Trouble in paradise," Soul said jokingly, continuing his slow task as she boiled over.
"Cut it out Soul! I'm being serious. I think this Panacea thing is dangerous and I won't take it back."
"No one's asking you to-"
"Crona is! He says I shouldn't get upset about things I don't understand but I understand well enough to be worried."
"Hold up; he said that?"
"Among other things, yes."
"That's not like him. I mean yeah, Crona can get pretty defensive about his research, but he's not the kind of guy that makes it personal like that. And I thought he'd learned to be more open after the Pendra thing."
"He had," Maka sighed, sliding off the couch and moving to the kitchen table, where she propped her chin on an open palm sullenly. "He was doing so much better, before those bastards at the party. Before all this Panacea business. He was better and now-"
"Maka listen," Soul interrupted her, filling a pot with water and adding the chopped vegetables. He set the pot on the stove and turned up the heat before continuing. "Magic is dangerous. Hell, with what we do even souls are dangerous. So there was never any way Crona's research was going to be totally safe. I don't like it either, but can you say for sure that it's the experiments that are upsetting you and not the time he spends on them?"
"Tell me I'm being clingy," she snapped, smacking her palm on the table. "Tell me I'm just the paranoid girlfriend and there's nothing else going on. Tell me you haven't noticed how even when he's home he's not here, the way he hardly sleeps or eats anymore, how every time he's in the lab he's holding that glowing hunk of rock that keeps getting brighter. Tell me he's not changing and tell me it doesn't scare you that this has happened inside of a week."
"I…" Soul stirred the vegetables for a contemplative moment before he set the wooden spoon down and turned to face her, arms folded. "I can't do that. Damn it, you're not wrong, you're not being paranoid, and you don't deserve to have your concerns brushed off."
"Thank you," she said intently, simmering like the pot and waiting for him to continue.
"And," Soul said, smiling and shaking his head. "I'm sorry for accusing you of being clingy. With Pendra our positions were reversed; guess I was just trying to be supportive on this go around."
"And you've had a lot to deal with with Vera." He didn't see he needed to respond to that, and after a moment Maka kept going. "I want to be supportive too. I want everything to work out and be okay again. But I'm… scared."
Soul opened his mouth to say something that was both comforting and incredibly cool, but was cut off first by a knock, then the click of the lock. Their roommate pushed the door open just a crack, just enough so that he could peer in, guilty as a thief. Irregularly cut pink hair framed a pale face and large, storm cloud grey eyes rather like those of a startled deer. He looked at Soul, then to Maka, then shuddered and retreated back to the welcome rug. Rolling his eyes openly this time, Soul combed his fingers through his hair and sighed heavily.
"Don't just stand there like an idiot, come in. You live here too you know. Anyway, the potatoes have to boil for a while, so I'm just gonna go back to my room and, I don't know, study or something. You kids have fun."
He turned the heat down on the stove and made for the hall, pausing by the door just long enough to grab Crona by the arm and pull him inside. They made eye contact and Soul smiled reassuringly before proceeding to his destination and closing the door. Maka narrowed her eyes at the pink haired meister- the witch, but did not speak as he closed and locked the door. She did, however, note the single rose Crona was gripping in his left hand. The sight of it lit a flare inside her, like he was trying to pacify her with flowers without ever addressing her very valid concerns. And as a result Maka was flinging biting remarks before Crona could so much as turn back around.
"So you found the apartment; I thought for sure you'd forgotten where we live. Or maybe "forgot" is too passive a word for it. You didn't have to come back, no one is making you stay here."
Crona turned his head like he was going to look at her over his shoulder, exposing his meek profile. His tucked chin and parted lips. But his eyes remained forward, towards the kitchen, and after a tight second he moved in that direction. It's quite impossible to be silent in a kitchen, though he tried his best, moving slowly and being gentle with the cabinets. Unable to find any sort of vase he elected for a tall glass to which he added water and the rose. Then he moved into the dining area and set the glass in front of Maka, quietly. It looked oddly deficient, the single rose in the wide glass, too tall and leaning at a sharp angle. His fingers lingered on the rim, his hair covering his eyes as he looked intentionally at his feet.
"I didn't forget," Crona said in a small voice, his fingertips going white as he pressed them into the glass. "I know where I live, where I want to be. And… I know who I want to be with. But I acted like I'd forgotten. I'm sorry."
"You hurt me," Maka said, watching his fingers go rigid as a second shudder coursed through his body. "You know that, right?"
"Yes," he whispered, shaking his head. "I know. I'm sorry. Do you believe me? Can I stay?"
"Oh Crona, is that what you're scared of?" Maka tried to resist the impulse to comfort him, but after only a second found she'd surrendered and reached across the table. Gingerly, she pried his hand from the glass, taking it in both of hers. "You can stay. This is your home, even if I didn't believe you, even if I stayed mad at you, you could still stay."
"I don't want you to be mad at me." He curled his fingers around hers, but still wouldn't meet her probing eyes. "I understand why you are though. Now I can't imagine what I was thinking but in that moment, when I said… I meant it. In that moment. So of course you're mad at me. Of course I can't make it better."
"I don't know about that," she said, rubbing her thumb across the back of his hand. "The rose is a good start. Sit down with me and lets talk it out. I won't lie to you Crona, I'm really worried, but that doesn't mean I won't hear you out. You've always been protective of your work, but never like this. What's different now?"
"I…" he started obediently, sitting down next to her and looking up at the rose. "I don't know. Nothing, but that's not right. This time it's as if… my work is a dream, and in that dream all the answers are so close. Then when I stop working I wake up and-"
Crona grunted in pain, using his free hand to cradle is eyes as he curled downward. Maka gasped in surprise when the hand she was holding grabbed at her savagely, his knuckles going white. It was as if someone had decided out of the blue to drive pikes into his eye sockets, flaming pikes that burnt the inside of his skull, building up pressure as if it was about to explode. Next to him Maka was saying something and running her fingers through his hair, but he couldn't hear her over the ringing in his ears or feel her through the pain. And just as he was sure he was about to crack a tooth from clenching his jaw the onslaught subsided and Maka came back into focus.
"Crona? Crona what's happening? Are you okay?"
"Yes," he grunted, cracking his eyes and giving her a sideways, fatigued smile. Soul, trying to look like he hadn't come running to see if Crona was alright, went into the kitchen and continued preparing their stew without comment. "Yes, I'm fine. It's a headache; I've been getting them when I'm not in the lab. I think it's the cold-"
"And the strain of constantly working, and the lack of food, and the fact that you're not sleeping," Maka chided, kneeling next to him and rubbing his back. "Crona I know your body is sturdier than the rest of us but that doesn't mean neglecting it won't have consequences. You can't do good work if you're not taking care of yourself. Sleep deprivation alone has all kinds of effects, like paranoia and hallucinations. When was the last time you had some sleep?"
"I, um, don't really remember," he mumbled, bringing the fingertips of one hand to his brow, tracing his ocular orbit. "It can't have been too long ago."
"It was most certainly too long ago. Go on; go rest your eyes until the soup's done. Then we'll eat and have an early night. We'll deal with everything else in the morning. Sound like a plan?"
"Y-Yeah," Crona said with a nod.
Together they stood, but before Maka let Crona down the hall she caught him by the hand. He looked at her, puzzled, and she gave him a little smile, stood on her toes, and kissed him tenderly. When they broke apart he was smiling, but looked even more puzzled. She clarified:
"You're impossible to stay mad at, you know."
"Sorry."
"Don't be sorry, be happy that I like roses. Your apology is accepted."
Crona leaned towards her and pressed their foreheads together, letting his eyes fall closed as he smiled.
"Thank you."
