And now I present you with the reason you should no longer hate me (or at least forgive me).
Soul had never been in more of a rush in his entire life, definitely breaking all his cardio records as he ran back from the dorm to the apartment. Even the exercise couldn't stop his brain from screaming the entire time, that long string of repeating 'no' spiced up with a few haphazard begs that not only would she be there but would be willing to talk to him. He was no pretty sight by the time he got to the door, his heart dropping into his gut as he found the wrong blond standing next to it.
"Locked, no answer," Liz sighed.
"Fuck," he muttered as he took out his keys, unlocking the door, and rushing into the apartment. It wasn't a big place so it took a matter of seconds for him to reassure himself of what he already should have known: Maka was gone. "Fuck," he croaked again but this time it brought with it another wave of tears.
"Hey, Soul, come on…" Liz got a hold of him, her arm wrapping around his shoulder. "She's probably just at Spirit's."
"Yeah," he hiccupped, "But I… oh, Liz, I can't. I'm never going to be able to look at her straight ever again, I… I'm shit. Complete shit."
"Slow down," Liz patted him again as she pulled him towards the living room.
That only made matters worse especially as the cake still sat on the coffee table. "Oh, fuck," he moaned.
"It's not lopsided," Liz sighed. "She did a good job."
"And I hurt her for it," Soul lamented as he wriggled out of Liz's arms. "I hurt her, Liz. She tried to kiss me and I grabbed her because I just couldn't let her hurt me."
"A hurt for a hurt isn't like you," Liz murmured as her arms wrapped around herself.
"Because I'm not me," he pleaded back. "I haven't been me since she left. And the whole reason was bullshit. She never got those letters. You said it and so did she and I didn't want to believe it but her face, Liz. She wasn't lying. I just needed her to be lying to justify it all, to be hurt, to be angry, and why? So I could stay that way. So it could be ruined because I don't know what to do if it's not."
"If it's not ruined?" Liz blinked at him, resisting the urge to smack him upside the head as she would in most other situations. "If it's not ruined you go back to loving each other. What else did you expect? So you were wrong. Tell her you were wrong. Apologize. She probably should have given you a black eye for grabbing her, and I can't say it's exactly forgivable, but you talk it out with her. You finally do what you idiots should have done all along and lay it out on the table."
"It's not-" The ring of the phone broke off his words, sending Soul into a panicked dash to the hallway. The receiver was barely to his mouth before he let out, "Maka, I'm sorry-"
Then came Spirit's surprisingly happy banter. Soul was sure that the only thing Spirit would have to offer was the start of a screaming match, but instead it was a strange offer to meet, so hopeful and peppy that he wondered if Spirit wasn't drunk. As Soul hung up the phone he stood dumbfounded, staring at the white piece of plastic.
"Good news?" Liz peeked her head into the hallway.
Soul shrugged, "Sure, I've got a date with Spirit."
The package had come at noon, a shoebox that was stuffed to the brim and wrapped in paper. Spirit left it just the way he found it even though his curiosity was killing him to actually see how many letters the kid had managed to write her. He was smiling as he knocked and waited for her answer before opening the door, finding Maka still laying in bed, a book open across the bedspread. "Your letters are here."
That quickly brought Maka to sitting but her hands clutched in her lap, threatening to tear up the sheets.
"I know I don't have to tell you to read them, Maka." Spirit moved close enough to put the box in her lap over her worrying hands and placed his hand softly on her head. "The kid wrote them and sent them for a reason. Stay up here, read them, and make a plan."
Maka nodded slowly as she already started to nibble at her lip. Spirit smoothed her hair once before turning back to the door and shutting it behind him. She took a moment to study Rin's handwriting, the fine way she curled letters on a page and wondered exactly what emotions had run through her mind when she hid these and again when she finally let them go. "What did you want to happen, Mama?" she asked the box.
When it gave no answer, Maka ripped open the paper, revealing a completely innocuous shoebox, something that she had maybe even seen, touched, moved in a closet, and never knew that it was filled with misplaced love. She threw the lid to the side and found pristine letters packed tight from front to back with some squashed in the sides, at least one for every week of that year but obviously much more than that. Maka started to unpack them, trying to ignore the instant feeling of wonder that seeing his handwriting produced since he was never one to write, not even a note because Death forbid, and started to arrange them by postdate.
Some envelopes thick with pages and others flimsy. Her fingers glanced over the row she'd made on the bed and picked up the latest letter, the one sent the week before she was scheduled to leave. She was careful when tearing it open, not wanting to risk injury to the precious cargo inside. It was one single folded sheet of music paper, strange stationary but at least one that made sense.
"This'll be my last letter since you're coming home. Or it'll be my last letter until you leave again because something in me won't let it be real. Something says you're going to come back just to take one look at me and realize why you stayed gone in the first place. Does it make me full of myself to think that I'm the reason you're gone?"
"Scared is kind of an understatement right now. I-" There were a few scribbles here, starts and stops that he'd blackened out and almost tore through the page. "I want everything to go back. I want to erase all this shit in the middle and just go back right to last year's birthday and tell you no. Tell you that you couldn't go. I'd take all the shit in the world for being possessive, for being ridiculous, for being mean and let you be mad at me for all that. I wish I had all the magic in the fucking world to do that."
"Instead, you're coming home to me as a liar, a coward, someone living a life that they don't like. I'm ashamed of what you're going to see because you used to tell me I was cool, and that's the last thing I am now. And I guess I'm scared that you're going to see all that and just not care. You're going to come home and prove to me what I said - that we were, are nothing."
"Worst of all, I want you to come home and magically fix all of it because I can't. But when I look back at a year of unanswered letters, you'd think I'd know my answer already, that you don't want to. You'd think a whole year had taught me that you don't want me and I'd have set myself straight. Instead, you're going to come home, I'm going to keep loving you, and it's going to kill me."
Soul was scared he'd have to ring the bell but thankfully as he trudged up the walkway the door opened, Spirit looking strangely pleased. "As promised, Maka's upstairs."
"OK," Soul answered and took a tentative step into the house, still not entirely able to let go of the idea that this was somehow a trap.
Spirit motioned towards the living room and watched as Soul took the same exact seat that Maka had been in the night before, the only difference being his worried hands starting on his pant legs instead of a blanket. "You need anything?"
"Nothing but an answer as to why I'm here," Soul grumbled.
Spirit took his spot, no teacup and no soft hair caressing to busy his fingers so his arms crossed his chest instead, adding a huff for drama. "I thought you deserved some truth. Not saying I like you or anything, but I have enough respect for you since you've saved my daughter more times than I can count."
"Truth?" Soul raised an eyebrow.
"All those times you called the house, Rin never told her you called." Spirit slowed as he saw the dawning rage starting to bubble on Soul's face but couldn't stop. He could only reach out a hand, at least motioning for the quell. "Rin took all of your letters, put them in a shoebox and never told Maka they even existed."
"She what?" hissed tightly from Soul's teeth before he shot to his feet, fists clenched as if he had someone to fight. "That bitch did that?"
Spirit grimaced a little, "While I'm not exactly innocent of it, avoid the name-calling. Remember that's her mother and I technically tried to keep Maka from getting too into it with Rin so that relationship might still be salvageable."
"I don't give a shit about Rin's relationships after what she did to mine." Soul wanted to shout but managed to keep it to a growl, the idea that Maka could hear him petrifying him.
"I didn't tell you this to get you mad at Rin anyway," Spirit sighed. "Just thought you deserved to know that Maka never got your side of the story. We both know she doesn't have a lot of trust in guys," Spirit took the moment to motion towards himself, "and you were the only one she did trust, but that's definitely gotten mucked up the last year. She's been living on Rin's whispers and her own insecurities, so forgive her a little."
"Forgive her?" Soul groaned. "Oh, what the fuck did she do that I have to forgive her for? Oh, shit." His fists unclenched and tangled in his hair as he ran through everything on his list of grievances, all of them crumbling to pieces with the truth that she didn't know. Everything he'd ever written, all of the facts that he'd laid out for her, she hadn't ignored them or thrown them away, she hadn't even known they existed. He had to finally let go of all the last trickling bit of doubt and accept it.
Spirit could only watch him tear at his hair for so long before adding the grand finale, "Maka's upstairs reading now."
"What?" Soul spat as his heart clamored against his ribs. "All of them?"
"Yeah, Rin didn't throw them out, just hid them. I had her overnight them and Maka's had them since noon." Spirit shrugged with no respect for how life-changing this was especially since to him this seemed like an inevitable. He'd always seen them as the shoujo manga romance that Soul had screamed against, that this mop-haired kid and his daughter were, unfortunately, meant to be.
Soul's head spun to the clock and found 3:30 PM staring back at him. Three and a half hours of reading? She reads fast but how many weeks is that? And where did she start? And what does she know? And does she hate me? The questions zoomed through his head as he watched the second hand revolve.
"Maybe now is when you make the decision," Spirit prompted.
Soul almost whimpered the reply, "What?"
"You wrote those letters because you didn't think you'd get to say it to her face," Spirit's voice had become soft and for a strange second Soul could almost hear Marie. "So maybe it's time to decide if you want to say some of that to her instead of just finding it on some piece of paper."
Reading for three and half hours wasn't beyond Maka's abilities, but it was a slow crawl through each page that she then carefully flattened on top of the stack that was a slow journey backward in time. There were times she had to reread because it was just too real or too truthful, and times that she had to stop completely because the tears wouldn't allow anything in her sight. His emotions ran deep on each page and hers couldn't help but echo out each feeling. She didn't want to pause, to break the movie that she was creating in her head, especially since there were still so many to read.
So when her door opened she didn't even bother to raise her head but attempted to clear whatever tears were left on her face.
"Maka?" It was Spirit's voice but when she did bring her eyes up he was pushing Soul forward by the shoulders.
Maka had to slap a hand to her mouth to stop the sob that wanted to swell just at the sight of him.
Spirit had moved Soul far enough into the room and changed his momentum, taking a step back towards the door. "Need me to stay?"
"No," Maka whispered as she let the hand move from her mouth to her cheeks, trying again to desperately clean them.
There were a million little quips that Spirit wanted to offer but he smartly left them unsaid, turning and closing the door behind him. Maka still jumped at the sound of the door, surprised because she was so engrossed at looking at his face, trying to gauge what Soul she was going to get, the one she desperately wanted or the one that she was afraid was starting to hate her.
"I don't deserve to order you around, but listen to me," he murmured. "Let me get this out and then you can…" he let that wither off and she could see the glossiness coming over his eyes. "I'm sorry. What I did… it was wrong, so wrong, putting my hands on you like that, yelling, there's no excuse. I can say I was hurt because I thought you'd lied to me but I know that's not true now." He waved a hand towards the letters. "How far did you get?"
"About six months," Maka whispered as she picked up the next letter. "Next one is from the end of March."
"You're working backward," he sighed as he brushed a hand through his hair.
"Yes." Maka slid her finger against the edge of the envelope. "They're… beautiful, Soul, all of them."
He scoffed at the idea, "Maka, it's all just heartache, how is that beautiful?"
"Because it's all the truth." She couldn't disturb the bed, too many stacks and piles in every direction keeping her trapped but she desperately wanted to pull him closer so she offered out her hand. "You were so honest and that was exactly what I would have needed."
"Yeah, except-" Soul cut himself off, finally letting his eyes drift down to her and catching sight of her hand. He tentatively touched a finger to hers but sighed before breaking the touch. "Can you give me the first one?"
"Why?" Maka felt oddly defensive, not having gotten through her treasure and not wanting to give it up.
"I don't want you to read that one." He reached out his hand flat-palmed next to hers.
She couldn't help the disappointment at the idea of a secret in the middle of all of his truths. "Why not?"
His throat bobbed through a hard swallow, "Because I want to tell you."
Maka's heart started to pound as she brought her eyes and her hand down, sliding her fingers over the letters until the end, the one she was saving for last, the one she imagined would be filled with so much hurt that she wasn't sure she could stand it. The idea that he needed to say that to her scared her, but she picked the letter out anyway and placed it in his palm.
Soul didn't snatch it back but carefully brought it to his other hand, turning it over as if reliving the memory before ripping open the end. She watched as his fingers trembled through the act of picking apart the letter from the envelope, letting it fall to the floor as he had what he was really searching for. He opened it, his hand coming to his mouth and rubbing there as his eyes traced over the lines.
While she waited for the pain and vitriol, his shaking voice started, not reading the lines on the page but the ones from his heart, "The things I should have said: While you were gone, I slept, ate, worked, and waited for you. I missed just having you in the apartment. I missed you waking me up, even too early. I missed you so badly that talking over the phone killed me because I couldn't see your smile. A month was already too long. A year would be unbearable." Soul had to pause as his voice cracked, the tears no longer just threatening but starting to loosen against his will. "I said it was you and me because that's all I've ever wanted. Because I love you. I am falling apart without you. I'll go back to phone calls, I'll wait, I'll promise you anything, just as long as you tell me we're in love."
He barely took a breath as his eyes broke from the page and hit hers, pleading before his words even could. "I know you can't tell me that now, I don't expect you to, but I'll still promise you anything, do anything if you say we can try. I just want to try to get back to that because I can't live like this. I hate it. I hate me, I hate what I am without you. So, please, just forgive me."
"Oh, Soul," she moaned out with almost too much frustration to bear. "Did you actually think that I wasn't answering you? That I read that letter and didn't say anything?"
"Yeah," he rolled his shoulders weakly as he cleared the tears from his cheeks. "I thought that sorry over the phone was a 'no'."
"The first time we spoke again after we fought?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, Soul," Maka repeated as she let her head fall into her hands. She shook it there, listening to his feet shuffle as he took a few steps closer to her.
By the time she could look up his fingers were tentatively touching her shoulder. "Maka, I need to know, is it a 'no' now?"
She pressed her lips together before shaking her head. "Yes and no, Soul."
"What?" It looked like the world had been yanked out from underneath him and his hand planted on her shoulder rather than the light touch it was before.
"I don't want to try. I just want us to go back. No trying, just doing, OK?" Maka started to rearrange the things on the bed, clearing them off her legs as she tried to miss whatever look was on his face because even if he was asking there was still the fear, a leftover from the year apart.
"Oh," his fingers tightened again and she heard him almost gasp for air.
She'd cleared enough to slide her legs out, getting them underneath her even though they felt about as reliable as jello. "Can I?" she placed her hands tentatively at his sides, threatening to slide them to his back.
Sound didn't come from his mouth as a reply but his hands clutched at her, bringing her without hesitation to his chest as he almost crushed the air from her lungs. His cheek pressed into her hair and she could feel the liquid soaking against her scalp as he trembled through silent tears.
"And I don't want to go back to the secrets," she murmured against his chest. "I guess it's easier now because we're starting off with the idea that we… we want to be in love again, like before, but what we're feeling, what we're thinking, it all has to come out."
"Like the letters?" Soul murmured into her hair.
"Yes, like that," Maka tightened her grip into his shirt, her fingers worrying into the fabric. "Which means I should be just as honest." She had expected loosening but that only urged him to press her closer. "I should have kissed you at the airport."
"At the airport?" Some of that pain had started to drain from his voice and Soul loosened his grip enough so he could look her in the face. "You wanted to kiss me?"
"Of course," she smiled softly. "You seemed scared, asking just a month and I… I didn't want you to be worried. But I was scared, too, and that stopped me. What's worse is when I got to Mama's I think she just knew what scared me about us. I was afraid you would find someone else and she knew that. I was afraid you didn't actually need me and she knew that. Every time I said something about you she just seemed to perfectly twist it to that idea that you were fine without me. You were living the life in your bachelor pad."
"Oh, don't fucking repeat that," Soul grimaced. "It was a bad joke."
"And it was only a joke," Maka reminded him. "I teased you right back, remember? It was no big deal until Mama heard it, chewed it up and spit it back in my brain with the right accents. You not calling didn't help though."
"I did call," he insisted. "And I don't want to start shit, but Rin answered. Told me you weren't there."
Maka sighed, "The oldest trick in the book."
"Maka, I can't forgive her," he murmured. "That can't be part of the deal."
"You don't have to," she answered quickly without a second's hesitation. "I don't think I forgive her, either, maybe not for a while. Maybe not without thorough explanation, no matter how misguided."
"I don't want an explanation," his voice came out as a hiss but he tried to check the tail-end of it by biting his lip, containing any more venom. Soul took a long breath for a pause, "I was with other people."
"I know," she whispered. "So was I. We decided that together, remember?"
Soul shook his head, "I only said that because I wanted you to say no. I was playing a fucking terrible game of chicken and lost."
Maka let out a weak laugh, "I did the same thing the first time we fought when I said we weren't in love. I wanted you to tell me I was wrong."
"And I flew off the handle, completely uncool," he grumbled.
"I wouldn't exactly call that your fault," Maka sighed. "I hurt you."
Soul hesitated as his fingers ran up and down her back, unsure of whether he was trying to give comfort or leech it from her. "And I did the same right back."
Maka nodded, "But I guess what I need to know is did being with them… did it feel like us?"
"No." He pulled her in again, clutching to her to reinforce the word that didn't seem strong enough because everything else had been the furthest thing from this. Holding her felt like contentment.
"Good," she whispered into the fabric of his shirt.
Soul let that be the last word at the time, his mind too keenly focused on holding her and keeping every inch of her molded to him. His lungs finally had enough air, his skin warm and tingly like after a long hot shower, muscles that he hadn't even known had knotted untying in her arms.
"Can we go slow?" she murmured.
"Slow?" he echoed.
"That's the only thing I want to go back…" She didn't seem to be making any sense and worse he could feel the liquid starting to stain through his shirt. Soul tried to pull her back but she was cemented, her hands refused to release their hold. "I'm glad you didn't let me kiss you like that. I want to go back to just holding your hand, being surprised by your arm around me on the couch and when we're ready, when it's right, that's when I want you to kiss me. And I want you to make sure you want to kiss this Maka, not just the Maka from last year or the one you've saved up in your mind. You have to make sure I'm still the girl you love."
"And if I'm still what you want," he murmured back. "We'll take it slow. We'll figure it out, but we'll do it together. Maybe we're not in love, but we're going to be."