"Soul," Maka says, "Can I talk to you?"
Soul's heart plummets. He can feel the nerves he'd managed to calm cracking at his throat. The environment on his screen sways with nauseating motion.
He didn't think it'd hurt so much to hear his name leave Maka's tongue. All the moments it's been spoken with kindness, annoyance, patience, or frustration blink by him in fleeting recollection.
He's dreamed of this. He's yearned for this.
He parts his lips in an attempt to mount the enormous hurdle pressed into the silence, where Maka's voice reverberates absently.
"Hi," Soul forces out.
It's feeble, and shallow- Maka wastes no time before responding. "Now, please."
Maka disconnects from the group call.
Soul's eyes flutter shut as the other listeners butt in with confused questions and awkward laughter. The noise fills his headphones and he nearly raises a hand to wrench them off; push the anxious chatter away.
A message from Patty pops into the game chat: oooh ur in trouble.
"Oh man, Soul," Liz pitches in between scruffing laughter. "Feels like you've just been called to the principal's office. What the fuck did you do?"
"Liz-" Kidd scolds her for making light of the situation.
They tumble into mindless bickering, lifting the attention to another topic that Kidd pointedly refuses to deviate from.
Soul is numb. His avatar stands unmoving in his lengthening inaction.
He eyes the discord window on his second monitor, the list of names, the locked voice-channel where Maka's icon looms patiently.
Trouble. Danger. What did I do?
Blackstar startles him from his muddled thoughts as he orders, "Talk to you later, Soul."
Soul's chest tightens.
He exits out of the game and mutters, "Screw you."
Their friends join in with stammered, quick goodbyes, and he can't bring himself to pass any words back before the overlapping of voices is cut off sharply as he disconnects.
His arrowed cursor floats over Maka's name.
He knows he can't run from this. The inevitably returns at once to frighten and calm him, guiding his fingers down against the slick plastic of his mouse to select the channel with a light click.
Soul enters the call.
He is greeted with silence, and fidgets with his hoodie stings anxiously. Maka's presence alone is deafening.
"You're back," Soul says finally, unsure of where else to begin.
Blankly, Maka responds, "I am."
"When did you get home-"
"Two hours after I got service." Maka interrupts.
Soul's pulse spikes at the sharpness in her tone.
"You weren't picking up your phone. I had to join that call so I knew that you would answer me."
Soul ties and unties his drawstring into knots. He feels dried up- out of tears, out of luck, out of time. Words die before he can manage to wrap them with the thinnest threads of coherency.
"I need you to exiplain," Maka says, and Soul slowly clenches at the fabric on his chest, "Whatever the fuck it is that I've been staring at on my phone since this morning."
Soul's grip tightens as pain drives needles into his sternum. It's happening. It's happening.
"It's- It's all there, Maka," he says softly. "What needs explaining?"
"What- what needs," Maka repeats with shrill frustration. "Oh my god."
After a careful pause, Soul's voice falls low, and strains, "I really missed you."
He hears Maka blow out an unsteady breath. "Soul. Soul. I'm trying to- to do this, don't make it difficult. Please, just, explain this. I'm not crazy. Explain it."
His eyes close.
"Can I… can I listen to your voice, for a moment?" Soul asks, and his desperation skitters shock across the phone line. "Please. Tell me about your trip, and then we'll talk. Is that okay?" He brings his knuckles and bundled cloth towards his mouth. "Maka?"
His exhales shake against his fingers, as he waits with searing patience for Maka to reply. Days and nights of aching for this, yet not in this way, mock his anguish.
Please, he begs internally, please.
"No," Maka says.
Soul's eyes open. "N-no?"
"I can't believe you," she mutters. "I really, really can't believe you. We don't talk all week, then the second I'm back you slap me with this- this- confession? Hate letter? I don't even know."
Hate letter.
"Look-" Soul tries, but Maka's quick words stop him.
"No, no, you think that somehow I'd want to talk about my trip? That you deserve that much?" Maka questions with thorns anger, spitting, "I don't understand you. 'Maybe I should just fuck everthing up,' Fuck you. Fuck you."
Her voice is ugly.
Soul withers. "I just wanted to talk to you."
"You want a distraction. I'm not gonna give that to you."
"I don't," Soul says, but it tastes like a lie. "I know you're not happy with me right now, but-"
"Of course," Maka interrupts sharply, "of course I'm not happy, Soul. You wrote me this mess and then ignored my calls all day. How else do you expect me to be feeling?"
"Maka-"
"Surely you thought about me, right? About how I'd feel, reading it and having to try and figure it out, on my own," Maka seeths. "You had to have thought about how I feel. How I felt." Her voice suddenly loses its fire, "You… you know how I felt. You know what I told him. So… why?"
Cold corners of selfishness and guilt press into the slats of Soul's ribs. He thinks of how this would be going if he hadn't let his destruction get the best of them- exchanging small pieces of their week, catching up, getting close, sharing laughter.
The foregin way with which Maka speaks to him now is enough to make him wonder if they'll ever get back there.
"I…" Soul smooths over the wrinkled creases on his chest. "I got lost after he told me that. I don't know. I started writing notes to myself that I didn't mean to send you- and it was an accident." Sort of. "I'm sorry."
"It doesn't sound like you were writing to yourself."
"I know." Soul repeats. "I'm sorry."
"Please say something else."
"Maka, I-" He lets out a frustrated breath, pushing away from his desk. "I'm fucking terrified, right now. I don't even know where to begin."
"Pick somewhere." Maka snaps.
Soul gets to his feet. "It's not that easy."
"Not that easy? Then why did you send it-"
"It was an accident."
"Oh, an accident," Maka says, dripping with singed sarcasm. "Yeah, okay. The least you can do is own up to yourself."
Bitterly, Soul growls, "I have, trust me."
Maka falls silent.
Soul hates the way it carves into his chest, regret already seeping into him as if every word that drops from his lips pushes them further apart.
The cutting edge in Maka's voice appears often in their conversations with Blackstar, but Soul has only heard the shards of silver directed at him once alone, years ago.
The three of them had been headfirst in an hours-long call of competitive gaming, tossing toxic words and empty insults bogged by swears. Determined to find a pressure point after being tormented for the night's entirety, Blackstar had fired a series of relationship-related comments about crushes and feelings and Maka's refusal to date anyone that hit the mark unexpectedly.
Maka got angry.
Blackstar kept pushing and Soul followed, entertained by the reaction they so rarely get to see. After having a piss-poor day, Soul fell into the amusement of teaming up against Maka until his tongue slipped and fractured the space between them.
Soul said a string of crude words that he can't recall- they'd left his mouth faster than he could snatch them away- and Maka broke.
She turned on Soul in scathing judgment; unexpected hurt. She suffocated the call with a high-strung, emotional thread about how the opinion of Soul holds of her matters, what he says matters, the concept wringing his throat and pausing their game immediately.
It was enough for Soul to take Maka from the call, and sit in privacy for forty minutes to undo his harsh comment and apologize. Soul has been mindful since then to keep his tone gentle and teasing impersonal- to never hear that side of Maka's voice again.
Yet now, he's standing in his room watching the tension in his fists, and Maka's anger reveals the shade of fragility underneath as she quietly says, "Just say you hate me."
Soul's head snaps up sharply. "I don't." His chest tightens at the empty pause that follows. "Maka. You don't believe that."
"What else am I meant to believe? Why would you write such angry things to me?"
The weakness of Maka's angry things strikes Soul with deep sorrow. His mind mournfully passes over the hot-headed, obsessive words he'd threaded those notes with. I can't keep doing this. I should fuck everythign up. You hurt me, didn't you? On purpose, wouldn't you? He's pained that he'd ever written them; that Maka could interpret them in that way. That Maka thinks she could ever be hated.
Sleepless nights and lonesome fevers cup the tension in his jaw, relaxing where the joints meet his cheeks. His mouth slackens.
"Because," He spills, "I've been thinking about you nonstop, and I can't remember the last time I felt this way, about anyone."
His heart pounds. He slowly leans forwards to press his palms flat against his desk.
"Felt," Maka says, "What way?"
"Maka," comes Soul's weightless breath, "Some part of me needs you."
His head hangs between his wired shoulders. Light from his keyboard and screen glows against his sprawled hands. The dark surface beneath them is scratched and worn from years of use.
"But…" Maka's words break as she recites, "I haunt you. And hurt you."
Soul wonders how many ghosts he has collected in his life; how many he has created from dust and unsent letters.
He wants to slither into denial. He wants regret to steal it all back. "Yes."
The pain swipes low and deep. "How could you want someone who does that to you?"
"You're worth it," Soul says. "Every second of it. You live in me, Maka."
He hears Maka's breath catch in her throat.
For a moment, he can nearly see it, the rain-spattered silhouette wavering opposite the field of fire that has grown in their distance. The mirage almost brings him to his knees. The flames climb higher.
He pulls his hand off of the desk to wipe the hollows of his cheeks. His feet step him aimlessly away from the monitors.
Soul stills, his socks falling silent against the soft carpet. His calves and stomach and shoulders tense.
"Everything you said," Maka continues. "Everything you did, every time you talked to me or said my name. I wanted to make you laugh. I wanted to be with you, every second, of every day."
Chilling warmth blooms from Soul's cheeks down his neck, and collects in his chest with vivid sensation. His lips part helplessly.
The small wobble in Maka's voice grows. "And you looked right through me."
His eyes widened.
Maka clears her throat, and returns with an even tone, "So I grew up. And we grew close. And I got to know you as, well, you- stupid and bold, and extremely loving, kind of a maniac." She pauses. "But I got over it."
Terror and fear, and confusion pool in Soul's stomach. He grasps blindly for the back of his chair behind him, fingers squeezing the plastic and mesh with force.
"Then we… we started changing," Maka says. "I held you at arm's length, but then you learned how to spin me. And it was fun, a-and exciting, some part of me realized I still…" She trails off, then floods with fierce emotion. "What am I supposed to do with this now, Soul? Why are you doing this to me now?"
The pain in her voice is saturated with disappointment, cold rain, empty nests. Weakness takes the wind from Soul's body.
"Maka," Soul struggles, "I didn't-"
"What do you expect me to do?" She whispers, sounding utterly defenseless. "To- to let myself go back there?"
Soul hears Maka sniffle, and the plastic in his grip begins to shake.
"It's different this time," Soul pleads.
"How?"
Wounded passion falls from his lips, "Because I see you now, and I want this."
"Do you?" Maka presses angrily, "What is 'this' to you, Soul?"
A thousand and one needs and desires rush forth into his mind with bright furor. It's early mornings, late nights, tender touches and soft conversations, light and laughter and darkness and depth. "It's- it's-"
"Can't be a 'life-partner', right?" maka asks, her trembling voice cutting Soul's thoughts in half. "Couldn't be that, could it?"
A shuddered breath rips through Soul's lungs.
A life partner.
No, his naive memories recount with deep misery, that's not really my thing.
"Yeah," Maka strings. "Yeah, I heard about that. It was when I was starting to feel a bit better too, not so sick to my stomach anymore. I can't tell if any of this is serious to you, or just some- some lonely game."
Maka thought the notes were a half-confession, half hateful goodbye- and now, she thinks Soul wants some casual self-centers fling. The realization pushes Soul further into oblivion; how did he fuck up this badly?
His world tilts with steep shame and panic. "I lied," he begs, "I lied."
He shoves the chair from his rugged hands and takes staggered steps away.
You… what?"
"I was scared of how much I want it," he confesses, carrying himself to the opposite end of his room as it courses through him. "It knocked me down, Maka, and I lied. I was just trying to get away from it because I've seen how it can end. You and I both have seen it with our parents." His movement dies as he lets the weight root him firmly to the ground. "But… you. I want you in every way I can have you."
In the quiet that reverberates in the call, Soul's chest rises and falls rapidly. His muscles tense and relax. The release stitches his wounds back together.
"You aren't joking?" Maka asks slowly.
His eyes flutter as the anger ceases itself from Maka's words.
"God, no," Soul breathes. "Really, really- no."
"How- how long have you not been joking for?"
Soul stares into the mirror hanging above his dresser. His face is flushed, his hair is ruffled by the bulky headphones covering his ears, the logo of a skull on his hoodie centered right over his heart.
"A while, without realizing it." He says. "But I started to let myself around the time of that valo game with the dream."
"...Oh."
Whatever chance I had, he thinks. "Did I miss you?"
Maka sighs. "It's not that easy, Soul." After a beat, she mutters, "I'm going to kill Blackstar."
Soul smiles dryly. "Not if he kills us first."
Maka makes a small noise of approval, and Soul's chest yearns. He wants to take the opportunity and run with it- drag them off of this path and hide in the tranquil underbrush of sly jokes and light normalcy.
The distraction would only delay them further, though, and the past seven days of suspense have been enough for Soul already.
"I was looking forward to talking to you the second I got back, you know," Maka says quietly. "All week. Everything I saw that was pretty, or thought that was funny, I meant to tell you."
Tell me, Soul wants to say, take us away from here. "I'm sorry."
Maka's words carefully drop from her mouth as though they're made of secrets. "It rained when I was there, Soul. I… wasn't sleeping well, and it woke me. The grass was all dewy. I laid in it for a while."
Soul remembers how he'd oozed into his lawn in the buzzing heat, carved empty after days of silence from Maka. Did the same hurt push her to feel the wet farmlands, too?
He pictures Maka bundled in pajamas and warm clothes, leaving dark footprints in the grass as she wanders beneath the rain. He can see her sinking to the untilled ground, and gently laying in the dirt and green.
He wishes he could have seen the drops collect on Maka's cheeks. He wishes he could have laid next to her, under a gloomy Ohio sky instead of his blazing Nevada sun. He could have pressed a palm to the water-dappled fabric on Maka's chest, or brushed away the mist on her skin.
"It kept raining," Maka says, "And I kept missing you. I felt safe, in missing you. And then…" Her softness turns to hail. "And then it's six in the morning, and you've sent me something that's just dangerous. You normally know when to stop but this-this?"
Soul tries to not think about Maka holding the notes in her open palm, eyes tearing over the glowing words as the author whispers in her ear.
"I thought you cared more." Maka finishes with a low inflection, "Then to do something like this."
Soul's shaky fingers pinch the bridge of his nose. "Please, let me explain," he says,"I care so much it's killing me. When I said I've never felt like this before I meant it- I can't eat or sleep or think straight when it comes to you." His fingers crawl over his eyes to squeeze at his temples, his vision trapped in slight shadow. "It's like I have to breathe you in to keep my head on right. I'm obsessed with you. So… so when he told me that I might have missed your feelings, so fucking close to mine, I just…"
He exhales with unease at the lumps forming in his throat.
Maka silently lets him writhe.
"I hate that I've hurt you," Soul says. "I hate it so fucking much. I know I felt it even back then- I wish I could go smack some sense into my old self for being such an idiot. I've been such an idiot, Maka." He hears Maka huff quietly. "I'm sorry that it came from such a dark place, I…. I wish you didn't have to find out like this." His brooding melts to a solemn murmur. "I would've done it all so differently."
The tiredness in his tone mollifies them both.
Maka hesitates before asking, "How would you have done it differently?"
"I could've sent you a nice letter," Soul says, his words soft. "Hell, I would've even handwritten something if I knew that- that this…"
"What- what would be in this letter?" Maka voices with a timid pause, then adds, "if I could even read your handwriting."
The gentle shift comes through Soul's headphones to glow with light between them. His heart picks up its sporadic pattering.
"A daily log of everything Blair does by the hour," He offers delicately, and Maka hums. "Or the amount of times I burnt my mouth on food, because I know that makes you happy, for some reason."
"Just wait for it to cool," maka says gently. "You're so impatient."
Soul grins, and says, "I'd have written about how much I wanted to hear you smile, just like that." He pauses, tone quieting fondly, "And tell you how much I miss seeing it. How much I- I… want to kiss you, like I have in my dreams."
His eyes tilt up to the white ceiling and circling fan. It feels beautiful to day it at long last.
"You dream of that?" Maka breathes.
Soul presses an empty hand to his cheek. "All the time."
The fire before them cackles with unknown direction, unpredictable intention.
He hears Maka sigh, and the breeze gently sweeps sparks onto his face.
"What are we supposed to do, Soul," Maka asks with tremors of faraway fear. "At this distance, with our different lives?"
His hand falls to link with the other in a nervous grip behind his back. "I don't know." He says.
He thinks of their friendship, of the long late nights and hours of calls and close jokes and frustrated bickering. The clumsy workaround of time-zones, schedules, personal gray-matter. The accidental moments when Soul's overambitious self pushed Maka into silence, into invisibility.
He thinks of how many times he'd rushed, too far, too fast to the edge of daring.
With his words, Soul bows remorsefully before the gold plated throne. "Do you?"
He knows there is no room for an apology anymore. The weapon that rests on the back of his neck has been held in his own grip for too long, and should fall into Maka's hands, and her hands only.
"I…" Maka touches the ax gently to the base of Soul's skull. With one fatal swing, Blackstar could be right- his destruction is their undoing. Justice is their unmaker.
Maka whispers swings, "I think it's too much." Her voice breaks, "I think this might be too much."
The blade cuts to bone.
Soul's head drops.
Severed, hurting; he feels his blood rush to his ears.
"What do you mean," He says, staring at the carpet with dead eyes. "What does that mean."
"Soul, I-"
"Are you- are you over me? Is that it, then, and we're not even gonna try, you- you're calling it?"
"No," Maka assures feverishly, "No. That's not what I… I just don't want to lie to you."
Soul softens in a matter of rapid, tumbling seconds. Throat tight, he forces out, "Then tell me."
"I have so much," Maka says, "For you. I can't explain it. It's like it's- it's bigger than me, and I taught myself how to deal with it. I was okay, dealing with it."
Soul sinks to the floor, weakened by the torrents of emotion washing over his tired body. His elbows dig into his knees as he presses his knuckles to his mouth.
"This is just so fast," Maka continues shakily. "So much just changed and my head is hurting, I- you said it, too, that you're angry and… and undone. Because of me." Soul recognizes the strain of tears in her fragile voice. "I don't think I'm ready for that. For you."
The words floor his skull with merciless, vulnerable force. Soul's face falls into his hands.
Maka whispers, "I'm not ready for you."
In the cold silence that envelops his plunging world, Soul's pulse thumps heavily in his ears. The blackness of his palms rebounds his warm breath against his nose and mouth.
Antigone, his head rings with twisted sowwor, bury me, too.
He wanted to slide backwards in time, to the moment he crouched in the Blackroom. Had he looked slower, and brought Maka into the troublesome room safely, perhaps they could have sank with grace instead of fury.
Why did I have to burn it all?
"...Are you there?" Maka asks.
Soul's hands slip down from his face. "Just… give me a second."
"Okay."
He clears his throat, then hesitates.
Not ready for you. Not ready for you. Not ready for you.
"So you still have feelings for me," Soul says finally.
Maka's voice is hollow. "Of course I do."
A broken puff passes through Soul's lips. "But you don't think it's a good idea to… to…"
"Be anything more than friends," Maka finishes with audible strain.
Soul's heart bleeds. Tears spring into his eyes, and he tries to blink them away, yet the droplets cling to his lashes with warmth. A harsh whisper tears through him, "Fuck."
"I'm sorry," Maka chokes out as she repeats. "I'm so sorry."
"You're sorry?" Soul questions in disbelief, and Maka makes a soft sound in confirmation. "Don't, Maka. Don't apologize. This is all on me."
"It's not, I should've said something sooner or- or been more honest with you, I-"
"No no no, you didn't have to." Hot streaks slide silently down Soul's cheeks, his breath threatening to hiccup unsteadily. "You did everything right. You… You're right." He sees small splotches hit dry carpet, heart churning with his dreams, his obsession, his recklessness. "I wasn't thinking about how any of it made you feel. I got so caught up in everything that I- I lost it. I lost us."
Maka sniffs. Her words are nasally, but fall with extreme softness. "I really, really like you."
Soul squeezes his wet eyes shut. "Maybe- maybe don;t say stuff like that."
"Sorry." The echo behind Maka's whisper tears into Soul's chest, "Just don't know when I'll get the chance to again, after this."
"Oh," Soul says. "Oh."
When they sever their fraying phone line, and he pulls his headphones from his skull, what will become of them? He'll watch himself fall headfirst into the unfamiliar pit of call-less nights and censored conversations- drawing curtains and ringing his brother and forcing himself not to dream of Maka.
Where will his words go, then?
"Well- what if we… do this now?" Soul suggests weakly, hoping traces of fear don't weigh heavily on his plea. "Get it all out, no matter what happens when it's done."
After a brief silence, Maka asks, "R-really?"
Soul nearly smiles at the faint hope in her voice. "Maybe it'll be good for us. I don't know."
"Okay," Maka says.
"Okay," Soul breathes, "Okay." He blinks away the smudges in his vision. "I want to say so much, you don't even know."
Maka huffs. "Write me another note."
"Hey. That is so wildly unfunny."
"Give me some slack, asshole," Maka mumbles, then pauses. "Can I… ask about that?"
"Sure." Soul wipes his face with his forearms. "Gonna make me super fucking nervous- but sure."
"Are… your dreams really nightmares when I'm there?" Maka asks. Quiet passes over him. "A while ago you said it was the opposite."
"I don't know," Soul admits, tugging his sleeves over his thumbs. "They're not like my other nightmares at all, but I hate the feeling of waking up without you here so much that they might as well be."
He nearly misses Maka's small voice utter, "oh."
Soul anxiously wrings his hands together. "You sure you want to talk about this?"
"Yes," Maka says, then adds faintly, "please."
Soul freezes at the subtle breathlessness that reminds him of fallen powerlines and flickering candles. "...Alright. What else do you want to know?"
"What was the dream you had?"
Soul's stomach flips at the strange intimacy the question carries. He wishes he knew why they inevitably communicate this way- in the raw, unbridled realm of unconscious thought and unspoken heart.
"You were in Nevada again," he says. "Except this time it was in my house. In the bedroom across the hall from mine." His teeth sink into his lip momentarily, and it tastes like salt. "You had a suitcase and brown shoes and those stupid bows. I… I didn't know it wasn't real at first."
He accepts the hours he'd spent sprawled on the guest bed, phone lying on the empty mattress, the strings of his earbuds curling in the space where Maka had been.
"I wished so badly that it was real," He whispers. "And once I started kissing you I couldn't stop. Of that's what I thought, until I did stop and… held you. Close."
"That sounds really, really nice." Maka says softly.
"It honestly scared me." Soul fiddles with his sleeves. "I… I realized just how deep this thing I have for you goes. More than just- just-"
"Wanting to kiss me?" Maka supplies with a slight cheek in her voice.
Soul's hands still.
"Yeah," He says, "exactly. When I woke up, I wanted to talk to you. More than anything. I had to reach you somehow."
"To reach me," Maka says in a tone Soul doesn't recognize. "You repeat that a few times. Why?"
"You said something like that in the dream," he reveals quietly. "That the reason you kept showing up is because I reach for you."
"I don't think reaching is the right word," Maka muses.
Soul tips his head back playfully, and sniffs away the salty sting from his nose. "Oh yeah? Do you have a better one?"
"You make yourself sound softer than you actually are."
"Maybe you just see the worst in me," Soul says. A smile tugs on the corners of his mouth as the call becomes silent.
Maka's words are heavy with sharp disappointment. "That's not funny."
"It's sorta true."
"It's not." Maka says flatly as though they've had this conversation a hundred times before.
Soul expects to hear Maka's shaded generosity, or baited compliments.
"You're sweet," Maka says, "But you also like to fight. A lot. I see it when you slip up and forget that you're always trying to coddle me." Soul's lips part in shocked rebuttal, but Maka quickly finishes, "That's why it's not reaching, when you do shit like this. It's more like… grabbing. Or taking."
"You fucking let me." Soul says, taken aback by his tenacity. "Making me think about bruises and stuff."
Maka snorts. "You started it."
"And you got scared of me." he presses.
"I didn't."
Soul's heart thumps with tangled emotion. "Then why did you back away?"
"Because I actually use my brain," Maka says, "And didn't want stuff to go too far." Just like now.
He remembers how he felt standing in his lightless bathroom, phone in hand and dangerous intention in mind. He would've done anything for Maka.
Maybe that's the problem.
Soul mumbles, "you and your bad habit of leaving me hanging."
"You're ridiculous," Maka says, but Soul can hear hints of light amusement. "You're the one with the bad habit of constantly trying to take things, all the time. Like you're some kind of hero."
A sharp grin floods Soul's face with heated satisfaction, and he murmurs, "Can't take what isn't mine."
"Soul," Maka warns.
"I know," He says lightly, and reels himself in.
Comforting quiet cozies them for a few careful heartbeats. Soul is grateful to have what he's been longing for from the moment Maka's failing reception halted their conversations.
He knows parting from this could be a painful goodbye. He wades in the strange gold they've created, basking in what may be his last taste of paradise for a long time.
Maka's voice comes through his headphones with surprise, words warm and hesitant as she says, "Not yet, maybe."
"Not yet?" Soul echoes, disoriented brows pinching together in slow-moving motion.
Maka takes his confusion and guides him, patiently, to the newfound in-between. "Even though it's not yours now, that doesn't mean it won't ever be."
Hope and pain blend together in a breathless, half-step of his racing heart. They seem like they're one in the same- made from the same dust, the same love.
"This isn't a 'no,' Soul," Maka continues, "It's a 'not yet.'"
