Verb; to disclose something partially or incompletely; to foreshadow.

A vicious kind of agony lighting from underneath Soul's skin sends the world crashing down on him as soon as he opens his eyes, locking his voice in his throat and stealing from his lips the breath he doesn't need. It ravages through his body like fire; the scar on his chest where Giriko cut him open feels like a brand, but despite the pain, all he can do is open his eyes.

The grey sky of Abeyance burns after being stuck in the dark for so long; something about the pain snaps and finally he can move, even if he can only writhe on the ground. A fog surrounds his mind, keeps him distant and his actions so clumsy that eventually he gives up and waits for the pain to pass. The pain is worse than the aftermath of vomiting up the potion, though not the worst he's ever experienced, so he holds onto that thought. Another feeling thrums just below the pain, snakes its way through his body, though he can't tell what it is.

Soul comes back to himself in pieces. When he can curl his fingers and toes without feeling like he's about to explode, he rolls himself onto his side and up into a sitting position even as it sends his world spinning. Propping his legs up, he rests his head against his knees and feels his vision slowly right itself. The pain gradually fades away as well, but the other feeling does not.

The hunger churns in his gut and he grits his teeth-he's not sure if it is a side effect of Medusa's magic or how long he has stayed in Abeyance, but his hunger had become muted in the past days or weeks, so much so that he had nearly forgotten it existed.

Now, it comes alive with a violent awakening, constricting around his mind like a snake coiling around its prey. The thought makes him think of Medusa-he wouldn't put it past the witch to lace his potion with something else, although he doesn't have much choice other than to trust her word if he wants to avoid sleeping.

Lifting his head, he looks down at his hand and rubs his thumb across his palm, where Maka's warmth still persists. A voice needles at him: if he hadn't fallen asleep, hadn't run out of the potion when he did, then what would have happened to her?

He continues to trace circles on his palm as the warmth slowly ebbs away, trying and immediately failing not to think of Maka. A loop of when he first saw her to when she left plays on repeat in his mind; it feels like it's been so long since he saw her, but when she opened her eyes, he had recognized every fleck of gold in them. A whisper buried deep below his thoughts hopefully adds that there had been something like happiness in them when she had met his gaze.

Clenching his hands, he chases the memory out of his mind by giving his head a vigorous shake, and tries to distract himself by picking off the strands of spider silk clinging to his clothes. Still, that doesn't keep the memory's truth from digging a pit in the bottom of his stomach.

Their bond is still alive.

Before he had been able to deny it, but now as the last of her warmth dissipates, he can no longer pretend it isn't true. Simultaneously, it is alarming, comforting, and something too complicated to identify-this is precisely what he had aimed to avoid by coming to Abeyance and making his deal with Medusa. But even though it's selfish, he is unable to pretend that seeing Maka and knowing he isn't completely alone in spite of being so far away, doesn't soothe the exhaustion that's been ravaging his mind since he entered Abeyance.

And yet it is this discovery, as he forces himself up and sways in the silent forest of dead souls, that makes him realize for the first time since he entered Abeyance that he is lonely. It stirs an ache in his chest, one that reverberates in the empty spaces in his heart and temporarily overshadows the hunger ingrained in him.

He moves, because staying still is deadly. There isn't a rhythm or real direction in where he walks, but it doesn't matter because just moving and swerving out of the way of cocoons and deserted spider webs is enough to keep his thoughts and feelings at bay. He even embraces the jagged sensation of hunger, although as it sinks down into his body, he starts to regret welcoming it.

There is no sun or star in the swirling grey sky, so he has no idea how long he was asleep for, and the grove of cocoons is uniform and endless so it feels like he is walking in circles. It seems like enough time has passed that Medusa's voice will creep into his ear at any moment, but the longer Soul walks, the more the silence around him seems to thicken.

Meanwhile, the hunger crawling inside of him begins to grow; it's dwelled in him so loudly for so long that he doesn't notice it at first, but now he feels it shifting somewhere between his chest and gut. It possesses him with a sudden desperation, thrashing and howling like a beast, and grinds his walk to a standstill.

A sense not made of sight, sound, or touch stirs to life as he struggles to keep moving, dragging Soul's gaze to the right. For a moment, he sees nothing, and then something weakly flailing grabs his attention.

His hunger releases him as soon as he spots the half-decayed soul trying to wriggle from its cocoon. Disgust mixes in with the craving his hunger calls up, but he can neither pull his gaze away nor stop himself from drifting closer. He stops just short of the cocoon, where the person finally takes notice of him.

Their flailing ceases and they raise a shaking hand towards him, mouth forming words that don't quite leave their lips. They aren't decayed in the same way as the poltergeists on Earth, but the color has been leached away and some parts of their body appear to be crumbling and chipping off, like a statue left exposed to the elements.

In reluctant steps, Soul inches closer until he is standing right in front of the person. He can hear fragments of their voice as they continue to attempt to speak to him, garbled and crackling like they have screamed so much they permanently frayed their vocal cords. There is nothing he can do for them in their state, he knows this, and even if he tried, the quivering ache in his hands from how hard he is working to suppress the hunger tells him it would not go well for them.

"Pl-please." A word finally escapes from the soul, face tilting up to Soul. There is a desperate entreaty in their expression. "Please."

It revolts him how hearing their voice almost breaks his resolve, even more so that he can't bring himself to move away. "I'm sorry, I can't," Soul tells them, hands turning into quaking fists. "I can't do anything."

"But that isn't true, is it?" murmurs a voice from behind him. The gleam of Medusa's smile edges into the corner of Soul's vision. "There is something you can do."

"I won't." He twists around, and backs away from the witch.

"Are you certain?" She slithers forward in a fluid movement, and he recoils, but Medusa doesn't touch him, hand darting out to grab the trapped soul by the hair and yank their head up. "You seemed a lot less sure when I was watching you earlier."

The action sends the person's scent wafting towards Soul, and if he was alive, he would be drawing blood from how hard his nails are digging into his skin. The confused terror in the soul's eyes is a mirror to when he was freed from his cocoon two years ago.

"There's no magic to preserve them now." Medusa's voice lowers to a hypnotic purr, free hand floating out to gesture to the forest of cocoons. "They'll all disintegrate away eventually. Why not take advantage?"

Her words make sense, a part of Soul's mind whispers to him. Horror drops his heart into the pit of his stomach as soon as he realizes he agrees with Medusa.

"I won't," he repeats, almost tripping over himself to get away from Medusa and the person. His words sound uncertain, like he's trying to convince himself of something he doesn't want to do.

For a moment, Medusa stares at him with a calculating gaze; some of the fear in the person's eyes fades away and they start to struggle again.

Then she shrugs. "Alright."

With a crack, she wrenches the head off of the dead person, tossing it away on the ground. One of the shadow snakes coiled around her arm detaches from her and glides onto what remains of the body, wriggling its way into the gaping hole where their head was.

Soul watches as the body twitches as the snake moves inside of it-eventually it emerges, carrying a glowing sphere in its mouth. The sight of it sends the hunger inside of him into a frenzy; it takes everything in him not to plunge forward, pry the soul from the snake, and swallow it whole.

Medusa moves forward and holds out her hand for the snake to drop the soul into, eyes never leaving Soul. Her gaze's golden glow seems to increase as she pops it in her mouth.

A smile curves the witch's lips as she chews and swallows. "But you will."

July

Maka blows away the leaf dangling on her lips with an irritated huff as she emerges from the overgrown bushes lining the edge of the forest near her house. A trickle of sweat runs from the side of her face and down her neck, mixing in with the dirt smudged across her skin and leaving her with an overwhelmingly sticky feeling.

A frown twists on her face as she extracts a twig from her bangs, a move that makes her muscles ache dully. She resists the urge to rub the burning sensation from her eyes; working herself into an exhaustion that it only takes closing her eyes for an instant to fall asleep is the main reason she has spent so many nights searching along the Rift in the past two weeks.

But still she can't dream.

Her fingers dig into the strap of her bag. For the past six years, sleeping and dreaming have bordered on the edge of disturbing and intolerable. There have been so many times in her life where she wished she could turn off her dreams and sleep free from nightmares of demons and poltergeists. That she didn't have to watch everyone she has ever loved vanish one by one until they are all gone, leaving her trapped in that aloneness, unable to move and powerless to bring them back.

And now that she would give nearly anything to sink into the dark weight of a dream, sleep has barely touched Maka, leaving her exhausted and at the end of her patience. It's a cruel irony that she has always been able to find Soul, and that after finally discovering she can, a bad bout of insomnia is what keeps her from it.

It makes a scream rise in her throat, although that will do nothing but cause Spirit to come out running with his shotgun. She funnels her agitation by sending a pinecone in her path sailing through the air and into the forest, pressing her fingers against the itch in her eyes. The glare from the rising sun sharpens the sting in them as she rounds the curve of the road that leads back to her house.

The light is so bright that she doesn't spot her mother's car sitting in the driveway at first, but as soon as she does, her heart drops into the pit of her stomach-her mother wasn't supposed to visit until tomorrow. She pushes herself into a run, sneaking up her driveway in a half-crouch. The murmur of voices bleeding through the front door makes Maka pause on the porch; through the front window she catches sight of Kami with her back to her, and then Spirit comes into view, carrying a coffee mug in each hand.

"Shit." Maka ducks below the window just in time, and waits, counting to ten before she allows herself to breath out. Easing out of her crouch and into an awkward hybrid of a crawl and a crabwalk, she listens hard as she moves toward the porch stairs and doesn't rise until she has made it to the bottom.

Panting, she wipes the sweat from her face as she heads for the side of the house, thanking whatever stars looking out for her that Spirit never followed through on his vow to put in a fence three years ago.

Still, it isn't as easy to climb up the rain gutter next to her room as it was when she was ten. If it hadn't been for the fortifications that Spirit added in after a big storm last year, then it probably wouldn't have held her weight at all. She drags herself onto the roof, swinging her bag off her shoulder and letting it land on the roof with a clunk.

Gulping down breaths, Maka lets herself rest for a beat and stares up at the sky, which is gradually transforming from the scarlet red of sunrise to its normal blue. In spite of her frustration, the memory of seeing Soul is enough to make it drain away. Thinking of him makes her heart twist in a strange ache-she's still not sure how to feel towards him, but knowing he is out there, not completely gone, is all she needs for now.

She sucks in a breath, squashing her thoughts down, and pushes herself to her feet, taking her bag with her. It takes a minute to work her window open, fingers leaving dirty smears as impatience takes over. Eventually, it slides up with a small groan, and she pushes her way in. Her bag snags on the window sill, however, and she loses her balance, falling onto the floor with a loud thud.

Below her, the muffled rhythm of her parents' voices stops and then Spirit calls out. "Maka?"

"I'm fine," she yells, scrambling up and bolting for the bathroom. "A few of my books fell off the nightstand."

"Are you sure?" His voice comes from the bottom of the stairs and grows closer as she makes it into the bathroom. "That sounded more than just books."

"I'm sure," she calls over her shoulder, swinging the door closed. She catches a glimpse of her dirt-smudged face and clothes as she twists the sink handle-there would have been no explanation if Spirit had seen her. She summons composure as she adds, "Taking a shower now so I'll be down soon."

"All right." The footsteps on the stairs pause, although Spirit doesn't sound entirely convinced. "Your mom is here so I'm making breakfast."

"Oh, really?" Scrubbing some of the dirt off of her face, she tries to silence the pounding of her heart. "I'll come down as soon as I can."

"The pancakes won't be ready for another fifteen minutes so take your time." There is a distant creak and then the sound of Spirit going back down the stairs. "We'll be in the kitchen."

"Okay." The sigh of relief Maka had been holding in finally escapes. She stares at the running stream of water coming from the faucet. There have been more close calls in the past year than there ever has been in her entire life; a voice that sounds more like warning than paranoia tells her that her luck isn't going to hold forever, that one day soon she is going to be caught.

Turning off the water, Maka turns away from the sink and heads to the shower, tugging her shirt over her head. Memories of the day she tried to tell her parents about seeing ghosts float through her mind as she piles her clothes on the floor and steps into the shower. Too many worries weigh down her mind these days for her to add another one to her plate-if there ever comes a day where she's forced to tell the truth about herself again, she knows she can at least rely on Spirit not to immediately send her to the psychiatric ward.

Shivering against the cold sting of the water, she thinks of Kami waiting for her downstairs and wonders if she's sitting in her old seat at the table.

Tilting her head back, Maka closes her eyes. As for her mother, she'll have to wait and see.

The shower peels away some of the fog hazing her mind, although she doesn't feel any less tired. Getting out of the shower requires an effort far too intense for taking a single step; all Maka longs for at the moment is her bed, but she wouldn't have been able to try to sleep anyways with her parents waiting for her. She looks towards the stairs as she exits the bathroom, pushing her hair from her face. It's an odd sensation to know both of her parents are downstairs, familiar but alien at the same time.

She's in and out of her room in a matter of minutes, wearing fresh clothes. Now that the adrenaline rush of sneaking back into the house has faded, a burning curiosity about why her mother is here takes its place. Tying her hair back in a ponytail, she descends the last of the stairs, giving a start as she glances in the living room and spies Kami sitting on the couch, phone in hand.

"There you are." A look of relief crosses Kami's face as Maka pauses at the entrance of the living room. She puts down her phone, gesturing to the kitchen. "I asked if I could help with breakfast, but I was sent over here instead."

"It is Saturday," she says, hovering near the edge of the room. There's still a certain reluctance lingering in her bones that rises whenever she sees Kami after going a few days without seeing her; it makes even the smallest of actions difficult, though it's slowly getting easier to ignore. "That was always his day to be the chef for breakfast."

A small smile spreads across Kami's lips. "Some things never change."

Maka nods. "I think it's comforting."

There is a beat of silence as their exchange sinks in; Maka clears her throat as she is filled with an embarrassed awkwardness, a feeling that is mirrored in Kami's expression. Even indirectly referring to the years Kami was away is something that suddenly puts the conversation on a knife's edge.

Her gaze trails away from her mother. Their relationship is too delicate to discuss such a topic without damaging the progress they have made in the past weeks, for flimsy strands with no foundation to bear the weight of the world. To acknowledge it would be to realize how much emotional damage they are carrying while pretending it doesn't exist, and she doesn't think she can survive that right now.

"He still burns the pancakes on the edge and denies that he doesn't, though," Maka says quickly as Kami opens her mouth. "That hasn't changed either."

"And that is because I have never burned the pancakes ever," Spirit interjects lightly from behind Maka. He has on the apron that she made him when she was ten, even though the strings are too short and he has to tie them together with a clip. "They always come out perfectly."

Seeing Spirit relaxes Maka, even if the unease in the room remains. It is no longer nerve-wracking to be alone with Kami, but it's still a comfort to know that he is there, no matter what. She leans into the arm he loops around her shoulders and looks up at him. "I suppose the charred black on the pancakes is just for show then."

"It is an integral part in complementing the crispness of the bacon," Spirit replies, tugging on her ponytail. He looks at Kami, and the expression on his face shifts and becomes slightly uncertain, although his smile stays in place. "I wasn't sure if you still preferred eggs over bacon so I made an extra side of eggs."

"You didn't have to do that." An embarrassed look spreads across Kami's face, and she stands, correcting herself. "I mean, I am grateful, but you didn't have to go to all that effort." She fidgets with her purse as she speaks, something she only does when she is truly nervous.

"Cracking open a few more eggs is hardly any effort." Spirit gestures to the kitchen with an overdramatic flourish. "Shall we?"

Maka is swept by a small push from Spirit's arm into the hallway, which prevents her from observing whether he lets Kami pass first or if her mother fixes him with the stubborn look Maka often wears herself and forces him to go first. They don't speak either, so slowing her step and straining her hearing also yields nothing.

It's difficult to gauge where Spirit and Kami stand with each other; Maka watches the way they carefully navigate around each other as Spirit passes plates to Kami and her, movements too rigid to be natural. A frown pulls down at her mouth: they act so formal and polite with each other when she is around that she has no idea how they truly feel. What Spirit revealed when she asked if he looked for Kami after she left is the most he has shared since her mother resurfaced last year.

When her mother sits, she takes the seat next Maka instead of the one by Spirit, where she used to sit. There is a pause after they have all sat down-they seem to look at each other and yet not at all. With her fork, Maka pushes around a piece of pancake, but she doesn't eat.

Spirit is the one to speak first, clearing his throat. "I know this feels a little out of the blue, but I want to explain why I put this meeting together."

She blinks-she'd suspected this was only a spontaneous appearance from Kami, not anything more. "I thought this was just a regular visit."

"It is, mostly," says her mother, running a finger around the rim of her glass. "I just have some news that your father and I wanted to share together."

"You're leaving." Her body recognizes the sharp ache of disappointment before Maka realizes what she's feeling. The grip around her fork suddenly turns painful, cutting into her fingers. "When?"

"Only for about a month, but I'll be back in time for our trip," Kami answers rapidly. Her hands still as an anxiousness Maka has never seen before curls on her face. "I've spoken with your father," she says, glancing at Spirit and taking a deep breath before continuing, "And I've decided to move back to Orcus Hollow."

"Moving back home?" Maka says slowly. It feels like something in reality has snapped; a heavy surrealness drops down, keeps her from saying anything else.

"I found a job, and although it's still in Moricio, I want to be here," replies Kami, eyes on Maka's face. "The hotel has been getting expensive, and with the new job, it makes sense to find somewhere else to live." She shifts in her seat, glancing at Spirit. "But most of all, I want something more permanent."

It's incredible how a single sentence is enough to paralyze her; everything is muffled and faraway, almost like she is drowning, and yet she is acutely aware of Kami and Spirit talking, of the way her eyes move between them, like she is following the conversation although it feels like someone else has taken charge of her body.

The sound of her name brings her back to herself, but not quickly enough; she turns her head toward her mother, where the nervous excitement on Kami's face is being replaced by a growing concern.

For a moment, it looks like she wants to reach out; her hand flutters, as if she is about to, but she clasps them instead and says quickly, "If this is too fast, then I can wait. There are some apartments I was look-"

"No, it's not that," Maka interrupts Kami before she can say any more, leaning back in her chair. "I just needed to process it for a moment."

"Which is understandable," adds in Spirit. The sharp glance that Kami flashes at him comes and goes in an instant. "That's why we wanted to talk about it with you."

"You talked about it?" she asks, gaze moving to Spirit. His expression is a mix of the serious look he pulls out for work and something else that she can't quite identify, although it resonates with her.

He gives a small dip of his head. "We did." His eyes flicker to her mother. "We wanted to decide when was the best time to bring it up."

"Then there's not much to discuss," replies Maka, straightening up. She forces the odd paralysis out of her body and the numbing indecision out of her thoughts. "If that's what you want, then you should do it."

Both Kami and Spirit wear the same expression of surprise on their faces. "Really?" says Kami. "You're okay with it?"

"Yes, of course I am." She nods vigorously, as if that would be enough to shake out the chaos of conflicting emotions out of her head. The weight of her father's eyes on her is palpable, but she knows he won't say anything for now.

"It'll be easier for me to drop by," Kami says. "For you to visit too." The excitement that she had muted is already returning, but then she pauses. "I don't want you to feel pressured to say yes, though, only if you're really fine with it."

"I am," Maka repeats a little too loudly. Her hand closes around itself, searching for the comforting coolness that won't come. "I am."

Soul stares down at his palm, where the burning sensation continues to spread through his hand even though he is now fully awake. Alarm and relief flow in equal measure as the heat pulses like the ticking of a clock; no matter how much he runs, he can't get far enough away to keep Maka safe, but at the same time, he revels in the fact that, after spending so long imagining the worst, he finally knows she escaped from the poltergeist.

"You're alive," he murmurs, tracing a pattern in the center of his palm.

"What is so interesting about your hand?" The sound of Medusa's voice from right above him causes him to start.

Flinching away, he pushes himself to his feet. "Nothing."

"Nothing isn't how it appeared like to me." She sits perched in the tree he had settled under, and follows his movements with a half-amused smirk. "It looked like you were reading a book."

"It's none of your business." He crosses the clearing they've stopped at for the time being, rounding the fire burning in its center. Born from a shadow snake Medusa lit like a match with a snap of her fingers, the flames burn gold in the middle of the fire, while with the outer flames are pitch black, throwing rippling swaths of light and darkness across the ground.

"That changed when you made your deal with me, not that I wasn't already well aware of you before we met." Medusa drops down and draws forward, right to the edge of the fire. The smile on her face grows when Soul moves opposite of her; conflict seems to energize the witch, and she appears delighted by his disgust.

"Then pretend you've developed a sudden case of amnesia." Ever since they left the forest of cocoons, there has been a change in how the witch looks at Soul, a tension that's been pulled taut. She looks at him in that way now, like she is waiting for something, for him to do something, and it sets his skin crawling.

The expression on her face sharpens, turning sly. "You're still hoping for a connection with that girl you bonded with, aren't you?"

Her words turns Soul's insides icy. "How can you know about that?" he demands, moving so he can see Medusa's face clearly. "How do you know Ma-"

"How do I know about Maka?" The smile on her face becomes a full-blown grin as he cuts himself off. Up close, the witch's eyes switch from gold to onyx and back again; which color is her eyes' true color and which is the one she altered with magic is a mystery. "I told you when we met that I had my sources."

"Why are you interested in me at all?" The crackle of the fire swells into a roar as Soul jabs a finger in Medusa's direction, and he wavers between backing away and staying put so he can watch the expression on her face as she answers.

"Have you ever wondered why there are no others like you here?" Medusa says, stepping forward. The fire is so close that the flames lick at her feet, but she doesn't seem to notice or care. "You're not connected to a living person anymore, so why haven't you turned into a poltergeist?"

The questions throw him off-guard; he falters for a moment. "Abeyance is huge," he answers finally. "There's lots of places other souls can get lost in."

"Abeyance?" She raises an eyebrow. "So that is what the living call this place."

Soul says nothing, only watches as Medusa moves around the edge of the fire. The flames appear to follow her, blanketing her in darkness. "But while Abeyance is quite large," she says, "So many souls die every day that enough should become trapped here everyday to fill the appetites of a thousand witches."

The fire rises higher and higher with every step she takes toward him, but he stays where he is. Whether it's out of fear or some idiotic kind of courage, he doesn't know, but it means the same thing.

"And yet, there are barely enough souls to sustain only the dozen or so witches left here," Medusa continues, tilting her head to one side. "Why is that?"

"I'm nothing like you, so I wouldn't know."

"Because most souls waste away in a week or less, unless they are preserved by magic." The light in Medusa's eyes doesn't dim as she pauses less than a foot away from Soul. "But here you are, two years later, body and mind still intact." She eyes him with a cruel, thoughtful gaze. "Though there is something about you that did change when you died."

"Nothing about me changed except my hair and eyes." Vaguely, Soul is aware of the way his voice has inched up in pitch, but he ignores it, along with the anxious panic blazing a path into his chest and throat.

"Both you and I know that is a lie," she breathes. "There is something horrifying in your soul, and you're waiting for it to consume you."

"I'm leaving." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the potion vial, flinging it into the fire. "I don't care what happens to me."

"Go." Medusa shrugs. "Any creature or witch you run into is bound by magic to bring you back to me."

Rage makes him forget Medusa outmatches him. "You-"

A quiet, familiar fluttering sound cuts Soul's words off as a dark shroud descends from the sky and lands in between him and Medusa.

Although the creature keeps their face huddled in the crook of their shoulder, he recognizes the wings of black blood swirling around the creature. Their voice is a hysterical babble, hands searching wildly as if to grab hold of Medusa. "Don't make me go back, I don't want to go back."

She brushes past the creature without sparing it a single glance. "As you can see, I modeled Crona after you, but there are things a regular human soul cannot be, even when crossed with a witch's soul."

His voice is stuck in the pit of his stomach; he can't rip his gaze away from Crona, the measure he had used to comfort himself on his worst days, the monster he is supposed to be.

"In a way, you are right," Medusa says. "You're nothing like us."

She doesn't turn to see if Soul will stay or leave as she moves away. "You're worse."

"Your mom's moving back home and you had nothing to say?" The towel Black Star had twisted around his hair drops with a plop next to Maka where she sits on the floor of his room, stained with the turquoise dye that's now the color of his hair. He rises from his bed in an odd half-leap and rummages in the top drawer of his dresser, pulling out two hair ties. "I thought you used to be the captain of debate club."

"That was for less than one month in freshman year, and ended when I almost made the other team's captain swallow their front teeth." Maka picks up the towel, balls it up, and hurls it at Black Star. It misses him by at least six inches. "And this is a little different than debating the ethics of the fossil fuel industry."

"You have your right to process things how you want," adds in Tsubaki, her voice slightly marred by static as she leans closer on the screen of Maka's laptop. "It's not easy to know what to say to news like that."

"How you feel is a good place to start," Black Star says as he loops his hair in two short pigtails, giving himself the appearance of wearing demon's horns. He tosses a pointed glance at the two of them. "Neither of you say much of anything these days."

"Our breakfast would have frozen over before I finished getting half of how I feel out." A humorless smiles plays on her lips as Maka presses her back against the foot of Black Star's bed, propping up the laptop on her knees so Tsubaki can see both Black Star and her as he settles back onto the bed.

However, Black Star doesn't share her smile, for once; instead the look on his face mirrors the concern on Tsubaki's.

She glances at Black Star and then to Tsubaki. "What?"

Tsubaki speaks first. "It just seems there's been something other than your mom coming back that's been eating away at you." Her aura of maternal worry radiates out, even from miles away.

"Like something happened at the end of the school year and you're pretending it didn't," Black Star tacks on. "Though you were acting weird before that."

"Like when?" She works to keep from sounding too defensive. "Because this is news to me."

"When the truck broke down by the old town and you disappeared for a while was the first time I noticed anything strange," says Tsubaki carefully, clearly trying to stay diplomatic. "And then when you returned, you said you were attacked by a dog, but there haven't been any reports of any feral dogs in a long time."

"And you still haven't told me where you've been going at night." Black Star doesn't make any attempt to hide the stung resentment from his voice. "Despite using me as your cover story."

"You've been going out alone at night?" Tsubaki's brows knit together as she frowns. "To where?"

There isn't anywhere Maka can look that doesn't make the guilt that was lying dormant in her stomach squirm to life, wriggling underneath her skin. "Whatever is going on isn't anything I can't handle." She plays with the keys of the laptop. "And it's something I need to keep to myself."

"Need is a strong word," says Tsubaki, frown growing.

"There's nothing that you should feel that you have to deal with on your own." Black Star scoots forward, the outline of his face coming into view in at the edge of Maka's peripheral vision. His finger prods Maka's shoulder. "Why can't you just say what it is?"

She flinches away. "It's not something I want to do on my own, but I have to, okay?"

Her words come out as loud and sharp as the hurt and the anger she keeps buried in her chest. She speaks quickly in the silence that follows. "I know you want to know what's going on and help, but this isn't something I can share."

It's impossible to look at either Black Star or Tsubaki directly. "I'm sorry."

Tsubaki opens her mouth, but Black Star speaks first. "So you just want us to sit here and do nothing?"

His tone sets Maka's teeth on edge. "That's not what I'm saying," she says after a moment of biting her tongue. "Being here is actually a lot on its own."

"Well, that's not how it feels like from this end." Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, he stands and crosses the room. "Keep your secrets, both of you," he says irritably, tossing a glance at Tsubaki as well before yanking open the door. "I don't care anymore."

Gritting her teeth, Maka resists the urge to throw the laptop at his retreating back. "He can be such a stubborn idiot."

"He doesn't mean what he says," Tsubaki says quietly as Black Star's footsteps tramp down the hallway. There is a guilty edge to her words. "I can understand where he's coming from, but I also know how you're feeling. You're both right in a way."

The laugh Maka gives is bitter. "That makes me feel better and worse, at the same time." She looks back at Tsubaki; the slight graininess of the video makes it difficult to get a clear view of her, but she can see the shadows on her face have returned. Licking her lips, she says, "You do know I do appreciate you being here, right?"

"Of course I do." Tsubaki waves away her question. "And so does Black Star, but he has to be a hardhead about it first."

"Though, like you said, he has a reason for it." Sighing, she shifts, lifting the laptop as she crosses her legs, and places the laptop on the floor.

"Did I mention that I'm coming home early?"

"No, I thought you were coming back in August." Blinking in surprise, Maka pulls the laptop closer, balancing it on the top of her legs. "When are you coming?"

"Sunday," she answers. "It's only a day earlier, but I want to be home for the summer already."

There's a hidden undercurrent to her voice that makes Maka look more closely at Tsubaki. "It's been getting worse, hasn't it?"

"Even when I have all the lights on, I still see the shadows," she says. "It's gotten so bad that I only leave the dorm to go to the lab." She looks like she wants to say more, but instead she shakes her head vigorously. "I can't think about it anymore than I already do."

"I understand." Maka swallows back her questions.

"Thank you." The relief is evident on Tsubaki's face. "I appreciate it."

Quiet falls between them for a beat, and then Tsubaki asks, "Do you ever feel like there's too much in your head, and even though nothing has happened, you can't help being completely exhausted?"

Maka smiles faintly. "All the time."