Noun; a ghost who accompanies a certain person.
Shock blots out all of the thoughts buzzing in Soul's head; his expression is mirrored on Maka's face, her mouth almost comically parted in an O. She's close enough that he can touch her, though he finds he can't remember how to use his arms.
That doesn't seem to be a problem for Maka; she moves forward without any hesitation at all, taking his hand. Her touch is cold, although there is a faint blush on her cheeks.
Her thumb traces his knuckles. "You're here," she says in a soft voice.
"Yes." He's vaguely perplexed by that; he was dozing by the fire a moment ago, and then he was in the dark with Maka, but he supposes it's the consequence of hurling Medusa's potion into the fire after going nearly a day without taking it. But with Maka's hand wrapped around his, he can't say he truly minds.
Maka's gaze doesn't quite meet his. "Why?"
His brow furrows in confusion. "Why am I here?"
"Why?" she repeats, grip tightening around his.
Soul frowns. "I don't understand."
"I don't either!" Maka's voice comes out in a half-shriek as she rips away her hand to poke him hard in the shoulder. She punctuates every word with a jab. "Why did you leave?"
Scrambling back, he lifts his hands and ducks his head behind them, attempting to shield himself. "That hurts, you know!"
"You're a ghost, nothing hurts you!" Maka pushes against his shoulder one more time, but she backs away, stabbing the air towards him with her finger as she glares at Soul. "How are you doing it?"
Blinking, he nearly moves forward before thinking better of it. "Doing what?"
For a moment, Maka looks like she is going to attack him again, but instead she says, "Bringing me-us-to this place." Her gaze moves up and down, then goes back to Soul, her eyes narrowing. "Where is this anyways?"
"The short answer is: I don't know. The long answer is more complicated." He takes it as a good sign when Maka only scowls, tilting her head to show she is waiting for the rest of his answer.
"I'm not sure what this place is, I can only reach it by sleeping and I don't do that often." He swallows, fingers curling at his sides. "I realized we were still connected when I fell asleep for the first time over here." Memories of the months Maka shut him out rise to the surface of his mind, and for the first time, he realizes that maybe the reason she is so upset is because she's moved on (that he's become as extraneous as he felt when he was alive), that she doesn't want to see him. "It was an accident."
"Yes, I figured that." Something dark and unreadable flashes in Maka's eyes before her expression shutters closed; there is a charged undercurrent beneath her anger, soft and sharp at the same time.
A long silence passes after that; Soul can't look at Maka in the eyes, but he can't bring himself to pull his gaze away from her, going from staring at her hands, which are balled into fists, to her feet fidgeting restlessly against the ocean of darkness surrounding them. Leaving, which seems like the wisest option, isn't something he can quite bring himself to do either.
"What are you doing?" Maka's voice startles him so much that he looks up. Her words are abrupt and lined with a strangely anxious reluctance. "Over there," she says, crossing her arms as she briefly meets his eyes before glancing away. "In Abeyance."
Shame flares in him under the weight of her hurt-he hadn't been thinking when he made his deal with Medusa, and every time something like regret inched its way to his thoughts, he did what he always did and buried it underneath the problems he could handle.
He takes a deep breath, on the verge of giving a non-answer, but his connection between Medusa and Crona stills the words on his lips. What the witch said about him picks away at Soul, hesitation rising as he opens his mouth, but the wavering feeling disappears the instant he meets Maka's gaze.
"The creature with black blood is Crona. They're the child of a witch," he says, keeping his eyes on Maka. He deliberates over his words for a moment before he speaks again. "You shouldn't be near the Rift or have anything to do with it, that's what I can tell you."
"What?" Maka's face goes blank, and then she frowns. "What do you mean?"
"There's more to the things that were happening before than you know…the Rift." The mention of the past turns the space between them into a festering wound; he curses his tongue and his existence, but he forces himself to continue before the cut can rupture. "Crona didn't cross the Rift on accident, they were sent, and I think something bigger is coming. I-"
You're worse. Medusa's voice echoes in his ears, cuts off his next words, and his mouth snaps shut. In life, he hadn't held onto anything too tightly, except for maybe Wes, but even then, there was always the underlying fear of being left behind because he could never be good enough, although he'd been the one who left Wes behind in the end. He looks away from Maka and into the dark; taking Maka's hand when they jumped from the tree in Abeyance was the first time he's truly held onto anything, even if it's ruined now.
"You what?" Maka's face comes into view as she ducks into his vision. She's closer to him than before. "What is it?"
"Nothing." His fear has followed him into death-it's why they are where they are right now. As long as she is safe, he would rather Maka hate him for what he did than what he is. Tension knots itself together in his stomach and chest in a writhing pile of nerves. "I don't know what it is, but something worse is coming from this side."
"What can be worse than a demon or a witch?" Maka leans forward as she speaks, raising an eyebrow. "How do you know all of this?"
It takes more effort than he is willing to admit to not lean in as well. "I can't tell you that."
Disappointment flickers across her face, and then it disappears as she pushes away. "So why are you telling me any of this then?"
"Because I don't want you to get hurt." He moves his gaze to the empty space beneath their feet. There's so much more he wants to say, but everything else on the tip of his tongue disappears when Maka touches the back of his hand. The touch is brief, lighting on his skin like the sun breaking over the horizon, and then it's gone.
"Why did you go?" Maka's voice cracks, wavering just above a whisper. She is close enough that Soul can feel her breath on his cheek, and he knows if he looks up, her face will be only a couple inches from his. "Why did you leave?"
The urge to tell the truth surges up unexpectedly; it takes biting his tongue to keep everything from spilling out of his mouth. A numbing kind of paralysis takes over his body as Soul fights himself-it's exhausting to hold so much inside his head, but even if he wasn't doing it to protect Maka, there's more fear in him than trust that Maka will still be there next to him after he shares everything he's buried.
Her fingers graze against his again; his breath catches as he lifts his head to see the space between them has shrunk to almost nothing. Despite the quaver in Maka's words, her gaze is determined. "You were the one who promised to stay, and I need to know why you didn't."
"Because you are more than everything." The words fall from his lips without him thinking about it. "And you are worth more than a promise."
Maka's eyes widen, and then they squeeze shut, her head shaking vigorously. "That's not an answer," she says. "What happened?" Her fingers press against his. "Why can't you come back?"
"Too much," he answers. He presses back against her hand, against his better judgement. "And I couldn't come back now, even if I wanted to."
"A witch?" she guesses immediately. "But how did she reach you? Through Crona?"
He hedges before he answers, a slightly nauseous feeling rising. "Not exactly."
"Who is the witch?" Maka refuses to be stymied. "Are you trapped?"
"N-I don't know." The tangle of nerves makes it hard to find his voice-getting this close to the truth is edging further down a slippery slope, but he can't let Maka hope for an impossibilty and get broken by reality. "It's hard to explain."
"Then explain something." A sharp warmth fills his hand as Maka squeezes it. Somehow, their fingers have become interlocked. "I thought we were a team."
For a moment, Soul lets himself want to change his mind, ignoring all of the reasons he can't as he holds onto Maka's hand as tightly as she is holding onto him. There was never anything resembling a happy ending for them, but the idea of staying together had been enough, and he had held onto that for as long as he could until it was ripped away.
"I never wanted this," he says, swallowing hard. "But I chose it." He lets his grip go slack. "There's nothing you can change because it was never you."
"No." Maka's eyes narrow in a fierce gaze. "That's not a choice you get to make on your own," she says, poking his chest with her other hand. "Whatever it is, I told you I was here for everything too and I'm-"
Continuing to listen is dangerous-the warmth of her hand has turned into a fire, and the idea of letting it consume him is too tempting. "The only reason I'm here talking to you is because there are things over here that are trying to get over there, to you," he says, tugging his hand out of her grasp and pulling away. Watching the change of expression on Maka's face gives him the same feeling as the hunger does on his worst days. "I didn't know about it before I crossed over, but I'd do anything to ke-"
"Except come back," she interrupts quietly. Her voice is more breath than sound, close enough that he feels the words rather than hears them.
There's a nauseating lurch in Soul's stomach as he nods. "Except come back."
"If I learn anything new, I'll come find you," he says in the silence that follows, shifting his eyes away from Maka's face. Her hand is still curled, fingers spaced apart for his, and he bites his tongue for a second, a hollow ache pounding in his chest in lieu of his heart. "Crona was here, but they're already crossing back."
"Anything else you want to tell me before going back to your new life?" He isn't looking at Maka's face, only watching how her hands clench and hearing the return of the sharp edge in her voice.
He can't help rising to her words. "It's not a new life."
A snort escapes from Maka. "You're sure acting like it is."
"The only life that I had was with you," Soul snaps, looking up in time to see Maka's eyes widen. "And it's because I l-"
He breaks off as his brain catches up with his words.
"You what?" she says immediately.
A different kind of tension stretches in the space between them as he locks his lips together. "It's nothing," Soul says finally. He hasn't been this grateful to be dead in a long time.
"You wouldn't have said anything if it was nothing," she counters. "What is it?"
His mouth closes; he had never meant to tell Maka about his feelings, even before the hunger had fully taken its hold on him, and he doesn't know what made him start to say it now. Balling his hands into fists and sucking in a breath for courage, he starts again. "Maka-"
From the depths of the dark, a harsh scream drowns out the rest of his words. Around them, shadows more opaque than the darkness come alive, the same shadows that pulled Soul to Maka last time, winding around his arms and legs.
There is barely time for him to look up before the darkness rips him away-the last image he has of Maka is her reaching for his outstretched hand.
Soul gets a glimpse of the decaying poltergeist standing over him as his eyes fly open, feels himself sprawled out on the ground as he stares blankly up at the grey expanse of Abeyance's sky, contrasting sharply against the snarling poltergeist's outline. The darkness still has its hold on him, weighing down his legs and arms.
He isn't able to register much else as the poltergeist lunges down, letting out the same scream that resonated in the dark, and he lifts his arm just in time to keep the poltergeist from clawing off his face.
The stinking scent of the poltergeist sinks into his mouth; he gags as he struggles to break free from the poltergeist's grasp. Just beyond Soul, the crackle of the fire is close enough he can feel the waves of heat on his feet. If he could shove the poltergeist hard enough, it would stumble back into the fire, but this poltergeist is different than the ones on Earth. Its skin is splitting apart and tinged in a darkening grey in the same way as the others, but the scream scraping against Soul's eardrums is more human than not, and the poltergeist's grip as it shakes his arm is unyielding, Soul's strength draining away the longer he fights to push the poltergeist off.
A choked groan escapes from Soul as the poltergeist manages to wrap a hand around his throat and squeeze tight, a burning sensation erupting in his head. For once, Medusa does not make one of her sudden, impossible appearances, and darkness begins to bleed at the corners of Soul's vision. The dark turns his desperation into inspiration and he moves before he can think, managing suck in a breath as he lets go of the poltergeist's arm and grabs its wrists.
Closing his eyes, Soul forces himself and the poltergeist back into the darkness he just came from.
"SOUL!"
Maka flies up in her bed, wrestling with her sheets for several moments until she is able to fling them off, and makes it halfway to the door before the realization hits her that she is in her room, not in the dark with Soul.
The rapid, shallow gulps of air she takes makes her chest heave; she nearly doubles over and the world tilts, hands becoming claws and bunching the hem of shirt into fistfuls as she struggles to keep her gasps from turning into sobs. Her nails dig into her palms through her shirt as she tries to force her thoughts to slow, but the only thing she can see is Soul, so close one moment, and then torn away by the darkness the next.
Wildly, she spins back around and dives back onto her bed, hauling the blankets back over herself.
Sleepsleepsleep. She screws her eyes shut, relaxing her clenched jaw as she attempts to will herself back into sleep. The roar of her pounding heart is all she can hear, even when she tries to smother it by pulling her pillow over her head.
A banging on the door breaks the illusion she is halfway asleep that she's talked herself into. "Maka?" Spirit knocks again as he calls her name. "I heard you yelling, what happened?"
Gritting her teeth, she tosses the pillow away from her face and swallows back the panicked frustration from her voice. "Nothing."
The door rattles slightly. "It sounded like something to me."
"I'm fine." She rubs her face, ignoring the wetness in the corner of her eyes. "Give me a few minutes, I'll be down for breakfast soon."
There is a confused pause from Spirit's side. "Breakfast was eight hours ago," he says after another moment. "It's nearly four now."
"What?" She scrambles up, the muted afternoon light bleeding through her blinds finally registering in her mind, and reaches for her phone. In between a few texts from Tsubaki and her mother, there are approximately a dozen missed calls and nearly as many voicemails from Black Star, presumably to berate her for standing him up for their lunch meet-up at the diner.
"I checked on you a few times, but you were sleeping like the dead." Spirit is still speaking as she wrenches open the door, automatically moving to one side. "How are you feeling?"
"Why didn't you wake me up?" she demands, whirling back around in her room to seize clothes from her closet. "I was supposed to meet with Black Star before going with him to pick up Tsubaki and now the surprise we planned for her is ruined." Her voice cracks on the last word, and she buries her face out of sight as she pulls a shirt off a hanger; there is too much, too much in her head, and anything she can do about it is out of reach, leaving her here, pretending to care about the color of her shorts.
"I know you're meeting Tsubaki and Black Star, but that's later, and this is the first time you've treated summer break like summer break since it started," he retorts, following her out into the hallway as she heads toward the bathroom. "You deserve the sleep, with how late you were last night."
"No, I don't." She should be making excuses for last night right now, but there is a fog separating her head from the rest of her body, her hands are clammy and shaking. No matter how many times she runs her thumb across the palm of her right hand, the cold from Soul's hand does not rise up.
"Maka." A pressure on her shoulder makes her stop; she wheels around to face Spirit, though her words die when she makes eye contact with him.
Spirit says nothing either, hand still on her shoulder as he looks at her for another moment, and then his arm drops away. "I'll make you something to eat while you get ready," he says. "Don't worry too much about being late, okay? I'm sure Tsubaki and Black Star will understand."
Swallowing, Maka nods and swings back around for the bathroom, letting out a sigh instead of a scream. The clothes in her hands drop to the floor as soon as the door closes with a click, and she presses her forehead against the door, sucking in breath after breath, though it does nothing to diminish the suffocating feeling in her lungs. The ghost of Soul's hand in hers echoes on her skin, and the image of the dark coiling around him and ripping him away strangles every other thought in her head.
There is something locked inside of her chest that keeps Maka from letting out a whimper, even as the tears pour down her face. Hugging herself, she turns so her back is against the door and slides down, pulling her knees to her chest as she tries to control her breathing. She doesn't know if she's still angry at Soul, whether she'll yell at him or ask what he'd been on the verge of saying when she sees him again.
If she sees him again, her mind whispers.
The sound Maka makes isn't quite human, but she doesn't feel quite human, either.
Be okay, she mouths against her palms, squeezing her eyes shut. Please be okay.
As soon as they enter the dark, the poltergeist's grip on Soul snaps. He flails wildly for a moment, putting as much space as he can between the angry snarls of the poltergeist and himself. The poltergeist is still close enough that the tips of its fingers grazing past Soul's hair as he continues to backpedal away. He's not sure what direction he is moving in, except for away, though that's enough for now.
He twists so he can move faster, which creates a ripple of movement that catches the attention of the poltergeist. On instinct, he holds his breath, slowing down his movements so it can't sense where he is. Instead, Soul lets himself drop into the dark, eyes adjusting gradually to the murk.
When the noises of the poltergeist begin to fade, he exhales and pulls himself to a stop, filled with quiet dread as he hovers and listens hard. From what he can make out, the poltergeist is still thrashing somewhere above him, but what he doesn't know is whether its vision will adapt to the dark as well. His teeth dig into his lip as he looks around and sees nothing but darkness; for a moment, he considers waking up, but he has no idea whether the poltergeist will return to Abeyance along with him if he forces himself awake.
There isn't room for any other other option than to keep moving, he decides after another moment of deliberation. He moves forward in an awkward swan dive, slow enough to keep from attracting the poltergeist's attention.
Soul progresses in stops and starts; it is clear that the poltergeist is still searching for him by the uneven way its enraged shrieks nearly dwindle out of earshot and then suddenly sharpen again. It reminds him of the last time he found Maka in the dark, though the song of madness is absent in this poltergeist. His head swivels back and forth, gaze roving over the vast expanse of the dark, the warmth of her hand still echoing in his palm. Looking for her is useless-he has the feeling that he would have already known if she was still here-but he continues to scan the dark for several more minutes.
When he finally gives up, there is more than a flicker of disappointment coiling in Soul's chest in knowing Maka is gone; a chasm lies between what he wants and what he needs to do, and opening his mouth to tell her how he felt was akin to throwing himself over the precipice and into the abyss. He grits his teeth and pushes the memory out of his mind-the only thing that is clear to him at the moment is getting away from the poltergeist and learning what he can about where he fits in Medusa's plan.
He comes to a stop when his arms and legs begin to ache, leaning back to stare up at the nothingness surrounding him. He hasn't given the darkness much attention other than the first time he woke up to find himself in a black ocean-even then, its hindrance in seeing where he is going was the only thing that registered with him. But now there is nothing to do but listen to the dark.
Like the Rift, there is something alive and breathing about this darkness. The whispers of a thousand monsters slowly smothering him, the feeling of dread as something brushes past, is absent, however. In its stead, there is the low hum he felt when he was first brought here; it's not as clear as when he was touching the mirror, but the pulse of a million souls is something he can feel in his fingertips, recognizes in his chest.
His eyes close, the sound of his breath echoes slightly in the dark. This darkness is similar to the one after he and Maka jumped together in Abeyance, and, if he stretches his memory enough, blocks out Giriko and his knives, he remembers the dark that came right after he died, bleeding over his consciousness in a gentle wave until the witch made him a puppet in a cocoon.
"They're all the same," he whispers to himself.
A quiet descends for several moments as the realization sinks in. He's not sure what to make of the fact or whether it means anything at all, but it's an answer instead of another question, and now he knows where he is going when he sleeps.
Before he can think more about it, however, a bright light prods at his eyes, an intense heat pooling on his skin. Soul flies up with a jolt, already scrambling back, but instead of seeing the rotting face of the poltergeist, a familiar glowing sphere bobs across his vision.
"You?" Soul rights himself and reaches out to cup the tiny ball of light, but it swerves away before his hand can close around it, hovering just over his head. Frowning, he lowers his hand, and the light drops down, dimming down to a soft flicker against the dark until it is close enough to brush against his nose.
The thrumming of souls on the light's surface makes itself apparent in a perfect mirror of the dark, but deep below the surface, in the center of the sphere, an ancient and unusual stillness emanates forth. It is resonant, in spite of the complete silence; the strangest part is that neither the stillness nor the vibration of the souls drowns out the other, interweaving themselves in a steady balance.
It's alien and familiar at the same time, a feeling that edges on memory, although he can't quite place it. He presses his lips together as he lifts his hand again, a useless holdover from life. The light doesn't move out of his reach this time, glowing slightly brighter as it bobs in place.
Icy fingers clamp over his wrist before just as his fingertips brush against the light. The rotting breath of the poltergeist hazes over Soul's face for an instant. He sees its eyes clearly for the first time, the green of its irises contrast sharply in the dark, and in them, he can see something that is still human, despite everything else.
Fight, his mind screams as the poltergeist twists Soul around and wraps him in a bear hug. It lets out no groans or shrieks as it strangles him, but its silence is more violent, a mute desperation clawing at his ears as he kicks out and tries to break free.
His hands tug futilely at the arm around his neck, nails digging into skin that no longer bleeds or registers pain, and then out to the darkness, for help that won't come. He struggles with all of the strength left in his arms and legs, even though he knows it's a losing battle, feels the surrounding darkness seep into his body.
Unfair, unfair, unfair. The word echoes in his head over and over again as his movements begin to slow. Anger was something he buried when he was alive, but smolders to life in his chest, a metallic taste on his tongue. Unfair his life was severed short, that his second life was ripped out of his hands just when he found out what it meant to live, that he can't even hold onto the fragments he wants to protect.
He kicks out again, partly in self-preservation, but mostly in rage, and feels his foot connect with the poltergeist's shin. Bone cracks like a gunshot and the poltergeist recoils; the distraction is enough to allow Soul to surge forward a few feet, though the grip of the poltergeist stays iron-tight. He continues to claw at the darkness, shoving himself ahead as much as he can-even if this is all he can do, at least he won't die cowering and helpless a second time.
The drumming of the souls swells into a roar and the dark is taking over the rest of his body just as the ball of light appears from the depths and fits itself into Soul's hand.
A warmth spreads through his palm and entire body as the sphere narrows and elongates, although the light blazes too brightly to tell what it is becoming. He doesn't have to know what it is to lash back on instinct; there is no noise as the light reaches the poltergeist, no feeling of the light sinking into the poltergeist, nothing at all, only the feeling of relief as the poltergeist's arm falls away from his neck.
With a gasp, he wrenches himself away, world flipping upside down as he somersaults once and rolls to one side, kicking frantically. The light is still in his hand, burning half of Soul's vision with a brilliant white, too harsh to look at directly, although it's enough to illuminate the space around him.
He's alone.
In Soul's head, the rhythm of the souls still drowns out everything else as he swivels around, scanning the darkness in anxious agitation. His grip on the light goes loose; there is the sensation of the darkness coming alive again, winding up his limbs to lift him back to Abeyance, but he ignores it, continuing to search for the poltergeist.
It's not until that he is being pulled away that Soul's gaze falls on the light, which has finally dimmed enough for him to see it for what it is.
A scythe.
Neon orange splatters violently across Maka's vest, followed by bright purple as Black Star shoots her squarely in the chest a second time.
The lights in the arena come on with a loud click, and the trio that she, Black Star, and Tsubaki are competing against come out of their hiding places, giving them puzzled looks as they pull off their face masks before heading towards the neon-lit entrance of the paintball arena. Maka waits until they are out of view to wrench off her goggles and stride towards Black Star, who is dropping down from the perch he made on one of the metal bars criss-crossing the arena
"You're not supposed to go after your teammates," she says through gritted teeth when she reaches Black Star, poking him in the shoulder with her goggles. "How do you expect us to win when you keep on shooting me?"
He gives a half-hearted shrug as Tsubaki joins them. "I thought you were the other team."
"We all had on goggles, and they had masks." She barely keeps from exploding, vaguely aware of the hand Tsubaki puts on her arm to keep her from getting in Black Star's face. "What's confusing about that?"
Black Star doesn't rise to her challenge, for once, his expression remaining unruffled. "I could say the same thing about checking the time," he answers coolly as he walks away.
Maka's hold on her temper, already fragile and strained past the end of her patience, teeters dangerously over the breaking point. Her goggles let out an ominous cracking sound as she clenches her hands. "You know wha-"
"I think there's a better solution than whatever you are going to say," says Tsubaki hastily, hand clamping down more tightly on her arm.
"Yes, and that solution is I'm going to murder him," she says in a loud voice, though Black Star is nearly at the edge of the arena, and well out of earshot.
"That seems a little extreme." Tsubaki lets go of Maka, but only to loop her arm with hers. "Have you considered talking instead?"
"I thought you were suggesting less extreme solutions than murder."
"Very funny." She gives Maka's side a light poke as they head towards the doors of the paintball arena, pushing up her goggles to look Maka in the eyes. "But I mean it, a sincere conversation goes a long way with Black Star."
Maka mostly bites back her snort, cutting her laugh short when she sees Tsubaki's expression.
The timer resting on the metal arch above their heads fills the air with a mechanical buzzing, neon light bathing the world in a surreal glow as Maka pauses underneath the exit sign and turns to face Tsubaki. The light casts brightly colored shapes on them, turning Tsubaki's face into a mask of red and orange. It reminds her of Abeyance, somehow, of Soul, although she can't think about him, or the facade she's thrown on for tonight will shatter underneath her fingers.
"I've already been as honest as I can." She works to keep the impatience out of her voice, fiddling with the strap of her goggles. "I don't know what else I can do."
"I know that, and so does Black Star," Tsubaki starts, reaching out to pat her hand. "But understanding only goes so far. There comes a point when not being able to be honest starts to hurt and begins to feel like mistrust."
Denial rises on her tongue, but memory forces Maka to swallow her retort. There are more times than she can count when she saw something invisible cutting at Soul, when she tried to reach out and he shut down the conversation. Towards the end, a forced kind of helplessness had taken over, and she'd let it paralyze her instead of trying to help Soul, but maybe if she hadn't, maybe if she had tried-
She shakes herself internally before she can follow that thought any further. There is no room in her head for any more ghosts than she already has. "Maybe you have a point," she admits reluctantly.
"I nearly always do."
A smile pulls at the corners of her mouth, in spite of everything, and she shifts so she can see Tsubaki more clearly. "I'll talk with him after tonight."
"You'd better," says Tsubaki lightly as they turn towards the exit. "I don't want to spend the beginning of break being the messenger between you two."
"That only happened one time," Maka counters as they enter the lobby of the arena. She hands her goggles and paintball gun to the yawning employee behind the counter, and begins to strip off her paint-splattered gear.
"And ended with a bloody nose and a black eye." Tsubaki shakes out her hair as she pulls her goggles off; through three rounds of paintball, she's the only one who managed to land headshots on the other team without getting hit herself.
"I only got the black eye because I insisted on making things even after almost breaking Black Star's nose."
Tsubaki snorts. "And he, being an idiot, decided to take you up on your offer."
"Well, we were twelve," says Maka, placing the last of the gear on the counter. "Critical thinking is not a strong suit at that age."
"That remains true for many past that age as well." Tsubaki glances down at Maka's hands. "Aren't you going to return the gloves too?"
"What?" Maka looks at the gloves Stein gave her-she had put them on before she'd put her bag in the locker. "These are mine," she says quickly. She's not sure if Tsubaki will notice anything strange about them, even though a pair of gloves is nothing like a scythe. "They're new."
"They have a metallic hue to them," says Tsubaki curiously, continuing to squint down at them as they head to the storage lockers. "Like they're glowing."
"Custom-made," Maka invents, pulling the locker key from her pocket. "My mom brought them from her time in France."
The mention of her mother distracts Tsubaki completely. "Oh, that's so sweet," she says, brightening. "How do you think things are going with her?"
"Well, it's better than before," Maka answers after considering for a moment, taking out her bag as Tsubaki does the same. "I haven't seen her as much since she's busy arranging things to move over here, but she calls."
"Sounds like progress." Cold air bites at Maka's face as they step outside into the center of Moricio's entertainment mall. Previously a deserted lot of warehouses, the city transformed the lot into a plaza just over a year ago, though it's only now that they've been able to go as a trio.
"Maybe." Her footsteps fade into silence; the ground seems to pulse with the changing lights of the signs in the plaza, throwing the same haze over her brain as coming out of a dream. "I don't think I believed her when she said she was coming back," she admits quietly.
The sound of Tsubaki's steps pauses as well. "That's understandable, when you think about everything," she says. "But what do you think now?"
"I think I believe her, but I don't feel good about it," she says, swallowing. "I feel terrified, like something worse is coming, even when I know it's not."
"Also understandable." Maka feels a gentle pat on her back, and sucks in a breath to fight the stinging in her eyes. "Trusting change is harder than trusting fear."
"That's putting it lightly." She gives her head a shake. "But it's not something we should be discussing while celebrating you coming home."
She rolls her eyes. "I'm returning from two semesters of college, but okay." Gesturing to the buildings in front of them, Tsubaki asks, "Where do you think he went?"
"We've already been to the arcades," Maka says, pointing to the pair of one-story warehouses opposite of the paintball arena. In this part of the plaza, the buildings form an oddly shaped oval, with the arena and the two arcades forming the points. "So it's either the trampoline park and the laser tag center or the food court."
They look at each other at the same time. "Laser tag."
They're mostly right: they don't find Black Star in either of the laser tag mazes, but bouncing in one of the long trampoline connectors linking the trampoline park to the laser tag center. Lamps are mounted evenly spaced along the walls, but it is still too dim to tell his expression, though it's evident that he sees them by the way he begins to bounce higher and more vigorously.
"There you are," calls Tsubaki as they pause on the trampoline panel in front of him. "You could have at least texted us where you were going."
"I left my phone in the storage locker." Black Star takes a running leap at the wall and backflips in one fluid motion, landing back in the same place where he had been bouncing in place.
Exchanging a glance with Tsubaki, Maka decides to speak, taking a deep breath to clear away her impatience. "We're supposed to be doing all of this together, you know."
"Yeah, I know." Black Star is bouncing so high that the tallest spike of his hair brushes against the ceiling.
Gritting her teeth, Maka crosses her arms to keep herself from jumping forward to knock Black Star flat on his back. When she was five, she used to nag her parents about having a brother for company; less than a year later, Black Star had been adopted by the Barretts, their closest neighbors at the time. Her requests for a sibling had quickly dwindled sharply after that, and then for good once Tsubaki joined their group.
But years of friendship means knowing all of the ways to get under each other's skin, which is exactly what Black Star is doing at the moment. Relaxing her hands out of the fists they'd balled in, Maka waits a moment to make sure her voice is completely calm before speaking.
"All right, then." She turns away, tugging Tsubaki's arm so she comes along with her. "We're going to play laser tag."
"We were?" A quizzical expression crosses Tsubaki's face, and then it clears abruptly. "Right," she corrects quickly, giving Black Star a slightly robotic wave. "See you later!"
"That was convincing," mutters Maka under her breath as they walk away.
"You know I can't sell a lie without being warned about it at least three hours in advance," Tsubaki hisses back.
"You really can't." Maka's reply is cut off by a sudden jolt from behind them.
Black Star sidesteps in front of them and jumps a little harder than he needs to as he bounds ahead, causing Tsubaki to nearly topple into Maka. "But you have a point, I guess," he says ingraciously.
"You guess?" The incensed incredulity in Maka's voice is tempered by a look from Tsubaki. She forces a smile on her face. "How understanding of you."
"You're both acting exactly when you were six and fighting over Legos." Tsubaki rolls her eyes, pulling her arm away and quickening her step. Their shadows flicker like flames on the walls as they move toward the mouth of the tunnel. "You know he just needs to-"
A series of loud pops interrupts the rest of Tsubaki's sentence as the lights in the tunnel go out. The darkness isn't complete-there is still light filtering in from the trampoline park, but it's enough to make Maka pause, though Black Star continues on like he hasn't noticed anything.
"Ow!" A sudden grip around her wrist nearly causes Maka to topple sideways. She glances up to Tsubaki, who must have moved back when the lamps went out, but she can't make out her face, even with the light coming in from ahead.
She frowns when she wriggles her wrist and Tsubaki's grip doesn't loosen. "Are you okay?"
"Who are you talking to?"
It takes Maka a moment to register that Tsubaki's voice is too far away to be coming from the person standing next to her, and another for her to realize the shadows on the walls haven't disappeared in the dark.
A rank smell worse than a decaying body floods Maka's senses. There is no mistaking the aura of the demon this time; dread cuts through her veins, roots her feet to the floor as the shadows unpeel themselves from the walls and twist into the faceless figures that the demon planted in the forest all those weeks ago.
They form uneven rows between Maka and the exit, hands split into points-the only part of them that moves, fluttering like they're caught in the wind. Their attention is not on Maka, however. The weight of their eyeless gaze lies ahead; she traces the shadows' focus with her perception all the way to Tsubaki. Her face is mostly shrouded in darkness, but the sliver that is illuminated is frozen in fear as she looks up at the figure standing over her.
Instinct brings Maka back to life, and she rips her arm out of the shadow's hold. She bounds forward and the shadows part from her path with no resistance; there isn't any time to pull the scythe from her bag, though she fumbles for it anyways, but as the demon turns to face her, she stops suddenly, heart leaping in her throat.
The last time Maka saw Masamune, it had been right before he went to the hospital for the last time. Back then, Tsubaki had been his shadow, his mirror almost, to the point where her expressions would change nearly as soon as Masamune's did. The only thing she hadn't been able to copy was the immense exhaustion slowly swallowing up the light in his eyes.
Maka's memory fragments under the reality in front of her; the red-eyed demon is only wearing the face of Masamune, she tells herself, but underneath the smothering aura of the demon, she can sense his soul, faint and shriveled. Death, or maybe something worse, has welded a permanent anger in it.
That rage reflects itself in Masamune's gaze, the one part of him remotely human. Maka watches as the demon's eyes travel up to hers-there is an unearthly pallidness to his skin, and the hollows underneath his eyes are even more sunken than when he was sick.
"I always thought there was something off about you." The fragile softness of his voice is gone, replaced by a rasp that echoes long after he is finished speaking. "You looked at empty spaces sometimes like there was something waiting to devour you."
"What are you?" It takes effort to dig for her voice, the words tumbling out in a rush.
Masamune's laugh is cold; the shadow figures remain motionless even as they grow taller, swallowing up the tunnel little by little. "I think you know."
Anxious trepidity spreads through Maka's stomach in a mangled knot. She looks at the space between Masamune and the mouth of the tunnel, and then at Tsubaki, who seems stuck in a trance. "Why are you trying to kill your sister?"
"Kill? Not at all." Masamune tilts his head to the side; the whites of his eyes turn the same pitch as his shadow figures. He leans forward, close enough that the stench of his aura is all Maka can sense with her perception. "Death will be a kindness when I am done."
She tenses then; it's impossible to defend herself or Tsubaki from a demon without a true reaping weapon, but going down without a fight is not an option.
"How are you still in here?"
The sound of Black Star's voice at the entrance of the tunnel crashes against Maka's eardrums; she jumps and so does Tsubaki, blinking rapidly. All of the lamps in the tunnel are shining just as brightly as they were before, like they had never gone out. From the mouth of the exit, the outline of Black Star waves wildly at them.
Maka looks back at Tsubaki, and scrambles to lunge forward as Tsubaki sags against the tunnel wall. There is a sheen of sweat on Tsubaki's face, which has lost all color, and her hands are shaking as she suddenly grips Maka's wrists.
"You saw him," she says in a breathy, high-pitched whisper. "My brother."
Excuses clog Maka's throat, but staring into Tsubaki's frantic eyes, she can only nod dumbly.
"He's back," Tsubaki breathes out, her hold on Maka's hands going slack. "He came back for me."
"Stop."
Soul levels a half-hearted glare at Medusa's back. They're still in the forest, but the trees resemble oddly colored palm trees now, their leaves coalescing together in a vivid mix of reds, blues, and purples that makes him dizzy if he stares at them for too long. "What now?"
The witch gives him no answer, but her head is tilted up, as if she is listening to something. But everything is quiet; even the constant breeze flowing between the branches of the trees has fallen silent.
Since she found him on the ground after his encounter with the poltergeist, Medusa has turned strangely reticent, which Soul would have welcomed if he wasn't trying to pry information out of her. He waits another moment, then inches forward, moving just close enough to see the side of her face.
Medusa's eyes are closed, her lips parted slightly, expression twisted in a dark exhilaration; the snakes covering her body squirm and writhe with an eager anticipation that makes the back of Soul's neck itch.
Opening her eyes, the gold of Medusa's irises turn black. "The Rift is rising," she breathes out. "It's time."
"What?" Following her gaze, Soul looks up at the grey sky encompassing Abeyance and frowns. At first, he sees nothing, but after a minute of searching, he spies a tiny weblike crack resting in the middle of the sky. It's white, nearly blending in with the grey, so it's impossible to tell how far it has spread, but Medusa's euphoria makes dread coil in Soul's stomach.
"The beginning of everything." The look on Medusa's face changes from exhilarated to calculating. "But you'll have to wait until the end to see it all."
His eyebrows rise. "A crack in the sky isn't something you can hide."
"Perhaps not, but that is only a piece of the plan," she answers, voice turning into a sly purr. "Although since you are just another piece yourself, I could see why you'd think otherwise."
An angry retort springs to Soul's lips, but he swallows it down. "Then maybe you should explain yourself better."
His words are too clumsy; a knowing glint enters Medusa's gaze as she moves close to him. "I can see the fight you're trying to win," she says, running a finger down Soul's face. He gets a glimpse of the souls caught in her mouth as she talks, and holds back a shudder. "How long has it been since you stopped drinking my potion to see her?"
A cold knifelike feeling sweeps through Soul's gut. "I asked you for something to help me not sleep, it's my decision if I take it or not," he spits, jerking away from her, but the way he flinches ruins his reply's effectiveness. "It has nothing to do with anyone."
"You are clever, but in the end, you're a weapon," says Mesuda after a long pause, turning away with a half-shrug. "Do what you want, but the only one being used is you."
Something stronger than the hunger gnawing at his insides rushes through Soul. He doesn't realize he's moving until his hand wraps around Medusa's throat, but even after reason catches up with him, he doesn't pull back, grip tightening.
There's only time to register a dark blur rushing forward, and then Soul is flying backwards until he slams into a tree, cracking his head against the trunk. A violent ringing sounds in his ears as he forces himself up and grinds his heels in the ground to steady himself, nails digging in his palms.
Medusa is still standing before him somehow, mouth curving into a delighted smile. The same feeling surges in him again and he lurches forward again, though he doesn't take more than a step before he staggers back to the ground.
"Do you see what I mean?" Her voice is low, but it cuts against Soul's skin like a blade. He lifts his head with effort; Medusa's eyes are golden again, but they're colder than when her eyes were black. "There is nothing you do without it being put into motion by someone else."
Soul feels rather than sees the shadows crawling on his body, fixing him in place. They have no substance and sink into his head like the puppet strings of the witch that bound him in the cocoon, raking their claws across his mind and coaxing free every dark thought and memory he ever tried to bury.
"Our time is done for now, but keep that fear and rage near." He's drowning in himself, but he can still feel the brush of her fingers on his face. "You'll need it."
His eyes are wide open when Medusa vanishes; the shadows release him and Soul collapses on the ground, struggling to keep himself from puking out his insides. His mind is a cacophony of memory and thoughts he never wanted to touch again, nightmares from when he was alive and the hunger from recent months swirling together. An eternity passes before he can bring himself to even think of moving.
The small ivory crack in what Soul now knows is the Rift stares back at him as he rolls onto his back.
He is alone.
Tapping lightly on the bathroom door, Maka presses her ear against the door and listens hard. The retching noises from inside stopped a few minutes ago, but Tsubaki still hasn't come out or made any kind of sound since then.
She knocks again. "Is everything all right?"
"Yes, I'm fine." Tsubaki answers immediately, the same reply she gave when she staggered out of the tunnel and promptly threw up afterwards, but there is no sound of her moving or coming closer to the door. "Just give me a few minutes, okay?"
On the surface, her voice is calm, but the brittleness of her words betrays the anxiety hiding underneath.
A frown forms on Maka's face. She rattles the handle slightly. "Are you sure?"
"Stop it, just go," Tsubaki snaps.
Silence plunges in between them; Maka blinks, mind going blank. She's witnessed the rare times when Tsubaki reached the end of her patience, but Tsubaki's anger is fiery and unrestrained, not this short coldness.
She opens her mouth, but Tsubaki speaks first. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound that-" She breaks off. "I just need a few minutes alone, I'm sorry."
"You don't need to apologize," Maka says quickly, backing up. "I'll be outside with Black Star, okay?"
There is no reply from Tsubaki, but she doesn't push again, turning to head through the lobby of the trampoline park and outside where Black Star is waiting. She glances into the park through one of the lobby windows as she goes, spying the yellow caution sign barring the entrance of the tunnel they came out of. Her eyes flick up and around the dome of the open space connecting the trampoline tunnels-there's no sign of Masamune or any of his shadow creatures, but she still examines the park for another moment before moving on.
The employee standing at the register mumbles a flat goodbye as Maka walks through the exits gates to the park, looking entirely uninterested when she pauses to throw a final look behind herself. Her tongue runs nervously over her teeth-she has less trust in her perception senses, considering she never once recognized Masamune in the woods or in the times she saw Tsubaki until now.
"How is she?" Black Star bombards her as soon as Maka steps outside, jumping up from where he was perched on a bike rack outside of the park's entrance. He cranes his head around to look behind Maka. "Where's Tsubaki?"
"Still in the bathroom." She shoves her hands in her pockets as she answers, partly because the temperature has plummeted another ten degrees, but mostly because she doesn't feel like testing whether Black Star is able to see the strangeness of her gloves as well. "She said she'd come out soon."
"Oh." The concern on his face turns into an awkward blankness, and he steps back, hunching his shoulders as he tugs down on his beanie. "Okay."
"Yeah." She swallows, looking at a space above Black Star's head instead of directly at him. "I don't think she's going to be in the hanging out mood after this."
"I doubt anyone has been in that mood tonight," he mutters, shifting away.
The last of her patience splinters apart. "Listen, I'm sorry I can't tell you the truth." Maka's voice rises as she seizes Black Star by the arm and yanks him back. She ignores his strangled yell, releasing him to glare at him directly in the eyes. "But it's not fair for you to treat me like this either."
"I'm sorry I can't tell you what you want to know," she says. "I know it's frustrating and I know you're worried, but I'm doing my best and I would have thought being my friend meant more than not being told a secret." She's surprised by the sting of tears in her eyes-she had thought she'd cried all the tears she had for today.
Black Star's mouth is gaping, though he quickly snaps it shut. "I am your friend," he finally says in a mumble. "It just doesn't feel like you are mine."
"I can understand why you feel like that." Guilt pricks at her from under her skin. "But I am, you and Tsubaki are the only people I would trust with this."
He appears to digest this for a moment, gaze trailing to the ground before his head pops back up suddenly. "If I figure out what it is you're not saying, would you tell me if I was right?" he asks.
Blinking, Maka processes his question, struggling for a second. "I suppose so," she manages after another beat. "Though it might take you a while to get that one right."
"That's fine." He bounces on the balls of his toes; the energetic punch in his voice is back-Black Star lets go of anger as soon as the fight is over. "I'll find out one way or another."
Maka presses her lips together to fight her smile. "If you say so."
They fall into a comfortable silence for about a minute, although Black Star fidgets, glancing at the park entrance so much it looks like he is making a perpetual double take. After another several moments, the words he's clearly holding back burst out. "Where is she?"
"Not a good idea." Maka hastily raises a hand in front of him to stop him from going back inside, although she checks her perception field another time. There's nothing but the adrenaline-fueled pulsing of the dozens of people inside. Tsubaki's soul is beating more slowly than it was before, but there is a corrosive terror that surrounds it, keeping her from discerning anything else.
"Why?" he demands. "She shouldn't be taking this long."
"She threw up again in the bathroom so she's probably cleaning herself up," she says, guiding him away from the entrance.
Black Star is frowning. "What did she see in that tunnel?"
Maka hesitates for an instant. "She saw Masamune."
A taut speechlessness takes over the space between them; Maka wavers between watching Black Star's face out of the corner of her eye and looking elsewhere.
"Is that who she thinks is stalking her?" he asks just as the silence begins to stretch out for too long.
The nervousness tangling in Maka's chest is the same as when she told Spirit and Kami she saw ghosts. "I don't know."
"Well, what did you see?" She glances back to find Black Star's gaze focused on her face. His expression is the kind of serious she has only seen on him two or three times in her life.
She sticks to the edges of the truth. "The lights went out, so I didn't see much else except Tsubaki, and then she collapsed."
"The tunnel went dark?" Black Star interrupts. His eyebrows furrow when she nods. "But the lights never went out," he says, frowning as he tilts his head. "I saw your shadows on the walls, you were right behind me."
"But-" A bewildered feeling spreads through Maka as she searches for something to say. Until now, she thought the lights going out and turning back on was a trick of Masamune, not an illusion; even the demon from her childhood hadn't been capable of altering people's perceptions of reality to be different from one another. The only thing that's apparent is that Masamune is either different from or far stronger than the other demon, or both.
Black Star's gaze narrows as she continues to flounder. "Did you see anything?"
For once, Maka has nothing to say, not even the slimmest excuse. Seconds tick by, and she feels the anxiety in her chest grow-the longer she goes without saying anything, the more she incriminates herself. Taking a deep breath, she opens her mouth.
A noise behind them makes them both jump.
"I didn't mean to scare you," says Tsubaki apologetically as she comes into view, tightening her ponytail.
She comes to a stop next to Black Star. "Sorry for all the trouble," she says, glancing from him to Maka. "I feel better now, though, so what's next?"
"Next?" Black Star exchanges a look with Maka. "Don't you want to go home?"
"Why would I?" The laugh Tsubaki gives is slightly too high. "I'm fine."
"You said you saw Masamune just now." An uncomfortable feeling crawls beneath Maka's skin as Black Star looks to her for back-up. When she says nothing, his gaze goes back to Tsubaki. "Don't you think this shadow stalker thing might be getting to you?"
"No, I don't." The smile on Tsubaki's fades, and a sharp edge enters her voice. "I haven't been sleeping well and the blackout didn't help, that's all."
"But there wasn't a blackout," exclaims Black Star. He gestures to Maka. "She said there was one too, but the lights didn't go out."
"They didn't?" Tsubaki's eyes widen. "But-" She turns to face Maka, who knows she's remembering the nod Maka gave when she asked whether she saw Masamune as well. The rest of her words hang in her mouth as she studies Maka, and then she twists back to Black Star.
"Looks like the only one seeing things is you," she announces in a voice that is much too loud for how close they are to each other.
"What?" Black Star's tone is half-stupefied and half-incredulous.
"You heard me," Tsubaki replies breezily. Swiveling so she is facing neither him or Maka, she adds on, "It feels like the perfect weather for a smoothie, doesn't it?"
She strides away before either of them can reply; Black Star trails a few steps after her before turning back to Maka, a completely baffled look on his face. "What the hell was that about?"
Maka, who can say nothing without unraveling Tsubaki's story, simply shrugs, the guilty feeling burrowing itself deeper inside her chest.
The inside of the smoothie shop Tsubaki disappears into is packed and noisy, the line wrapping around into the small room. Maka takes one look around, and feels her head begin to pound. Being surrounded by so many souls in a small space is like slowly being smothered alive, nauseating and disorienting in a way that completely detaches her from her sense of self, and something she normally only manages to deal with by shutting down her perception field. Stealing a glance at Tsubaki, she rolls back her shoulders and tries her best to ignore the racket in her mind as she and Black Star join Tsubaki in line-tuning out the field is not something she can risk after the encounter with Masamune.
An uproar of laughter from a particularly obnoxious group rattles the inside of her head so hard that she nearly claps her hands over her ears. Her reaction doesn't go unnoticed by Tsubaki or Black Star, but she beats them before they can say anything.
"I can't even hear myself think in here," she says, raising her voice over the din. The throbbing in her temples continues to grow, and she digs in her bag for her wallet, thrusting several dollars into Tsubaki's hand. "Get me whatever you want, I'm going to find somewhere to sit out on the patio."
The icy sting of the night air bites at Maka's face as she steps outside; it washes away the suffocating haze from her mind, and she takes a deep breath and stays still for a moment while the chaos of the souls inside the shop fades to faint background noise.
Hoisting her bag more securely on her shoulder, she heads for the gated patio outside of the shop. Even though it's summer, the cold breeze from the surrounding area pushes everyone indoors-the patio is empty and the quad connecting the different buildings of the plaza is near deserted.
Maka chooses to sit at the table in the far corner of the patio, tucked against the corner of the building with rows of decorative bushes behind it. Positioning herself so she can see Tsubaki and Black Star's progress through the line, she takes out the scythe cube, careful not to squeeze it. Licking her lips, she stares at the cube with a heavy concentration and then she finally looks away, sighing. While there'd been no time to see the effect of the scythe on the poltergeist last night, she doubts this scythe will be enough to destroy the demon the way she and Soul had.
A tightness seals her throat. Breathing out slowly, she looks down at her hand and clenches it. She's spent the last four hours being acutely aware that the temperature of her skin hasn't changed once; there wasn't the slightest pull of Soul's presence even when she escaped to the bathroom earlier and managed to lull herself into a vague kind of semi-consciousness, the faint tendrils of the darkness briefly tugging at her.
Burying her face in her hands, she whispers, "Where are you?"
"Right here."
Her head flies up in shock, hope blooming even though the voice is nothing close to Soul's. She looks up to empty air, however, and glances about herself, seeing no one.
"Down here," the voice says crossly.
Looking down at the seat next to her, Maka catches a flash of purple as Blair springs up onto the table. "What are you doing here?" she says once she can speak through her shock, snatching the cube off of the table.
"I promised I'd keep a better eye on you, didn't I?" she says, swishing her tail.
She tucks away the cube back into her bag. "You didn't, and considering your track record, I'd prefer you didn't."
The cat's face puckers. "Blair never meant for scythe boy to die," she answers nervously, "Blair hadn't spoken to anyone since the witches disappeared; it was lonely."
"And what about the human souls your witch ate?" Maka's frown stays in place. "Would you ever go back to how you were before?"
"She had many familiars, our bond wasn't the same as yours. I didn't know humans felt the same things we did." Blair pauses for a moment and has the grace to look somewhat ashamed before giving a decisive nod of her head. "I like humans better, they feed me fish and let me sleep inside when it's cold."
A faint smile pulls at the corner of Maka's mouth in spite of herself. "So that's where you disappear to in the winter."
"Your father sneezed every time he saw me, I'm not that cruel." Blair's tail brushes against the side of Maka's face as she paces back and forth across the table. "Although now that you have scythe boy, I might stay outside your window sometimes and use him for company."
It's not the mention of Soul, but the memory of sitting out with him on the roof and the distance between what they were then and what they are now that makes the hole in Maka's chest ache so sharply.
"He's not here anymore." She says the words quickly, rips them off like a scab. "So-he left."
Blair freezes in the middle of her pacing, paw hovering in the air. "But that's impossible," she exclaims.
She stares at the deep, long shadows the bushes cast in front of them. "It's more than possible."
"But I can smell him." She lifts her head high, sniffing the air. "He has to still be here."
"We went into the Rift to repair a rip in it, and something happened, he lost control," she says, pressing her fingertips against the cold metal of the table. "He went into the witches' realm right before the hole closed. We see each other in my dreams sometimes, so I don't think it destroyed our bond completely, even though that's what he wants." Her palms flatten on the table. In the past two months, she's relived what happened in the Rift a thousand times until the memory etched itself into her bones, into her skin. But she's never once spoken the truth about what happened aloud; it tears open the pain she buried inside her chest, the agony roaring to life like a snarling beast.
Blair is quiet for a long moment. "Is that what he told you?"
I never wanted this. His words echo in Maka's head. But I chose it.
Letting out a breath, she says, "Maybe not, but it's what his actions said." It's the most honest answer she can give without losing control of her emotions.
You are more than everything.
"I want to find him." The confession is nearly inaudible, more to herself than to Blair-it feels dangerous to speak her feelings aloud, to make them concrete. She lifts her gaze to the sky; the lights from the city turn the night starless. "Even if we never see each other again after.
"I need to find a way across the Rift, and I haven't even found a hole large and stable enough to start from." Her words burst out with a force that surprises Maka, carries all the frustration entombed inside of her. "I've gotten nowhere."
"I don't know much about the Rift you speak of, but I do have magic," the cat says finally. "I could take you across."
A stunned speechlessness takes over Maka; her mouth works for a moment. "Really?" she manages to say after a minute.
"Blair's magic isn't as strong since the witches went away." Her tail swishes as she moves directly in front of Maka, golden eyes practically glowing against the night. "But ripping something open should be easy enough."
"In a few weeks, I'll be in a place where the Rift is the thinnest," says Maka rapidly. She doesn't allow herself to hope, although she can't stop the increasing fluttering of her heart. "We can try going across the Rift then."
"Crossing?" Tsubaki's voice comes from the right of Maka. "What's the Rift?"
"And why are you talking to a cat?" adds Black Star, coming into the edge of Maka's peripheral vision. He takes a seat on the stone bench bracketing the table.
"I was making some notes on my phone for the trip with my mom." She mimics shoving her phone in her pocket before Tsubaki or Black Star can look down. "The cat is just a friendly stray," she adds loudly, giving Blair, who is sniffing the drink in Black Star's hand while Tsubaki scratches between her ears, a pointed glare when she doesn't take the hint. The cat takes another moment to preen at the attention and head rubs before heeding Maka, leaping off the table in one bound and disappearing into the bushes.
Tsubaki watches her go with a rueful gaze. "I wanted a cat when I was little."
"You had one, didn't you?" asks Black Star, passing Maka her drink. "It was grey."
"Oh." Tsubaki's expression falls. "That was a kitten I found on the way home from school, I only kept her for the day," she says, playing with her smoothie's straw. "My brother was sensitive to pet dander, so my parents insisted we take it to a pet shelter."
She starts to say something else, but her head snaps back hard enough that she nearly tumbles backwards.
"Hey!" Black Star catches her, but just barely, dropping his drink to steady her. The lid pops off as the drink topples over, and hot coffee splatters all over the table and Tsubaki.
Steam rises from the rivulets of coffee running across the table, but Tsubaki says nothing as she jumps up, although bright red streaks mark her collarbone and neck.
Both Maka and Black Star scramble to their feet at the same time. "Are you all right?" asks Maka, eyes wide as she studies Tsubaki's burns, while Black Star attempts to wring the coffee from her sleeve.
Tsubaki doesn't answer this; her gaze is focused on something invisible, lips moving wordlessly. The air has grown thick, and the wind has stilled. In the space around them, the rancid aura of Masamune drops down, curling in thick sheets around Tsubaki.
"We need to leave." Maka's head twists as she glances up into the trees. It's too dark to tell the trees' outlines from any of Masamune's shadow figures; the shadows on the patio appear real enough, but she can't trust what she sees or hears anymore.
"What?" Black Star slows, eyes flitting from Tsubaki to Maka. "Why?"
"It would take too long to explain." Grabbing Tsubaki's hand, she turns to Black Star. The only place that might be safe from Masamune would be the DWMA, but the nearest portal is at least ten minutes away. "Would you just help me-"
Pain explodes in the back of Maka's head, white spots dotting across the span of her vision. Staggering forward, she doubles over and gasps for air. There is a roaring in her blood that has nothing to do with the blow to her head.
"Why did you hit her?" Black Star's voice is distant, reverberates in her ears. Planting her hands on her knees, she forces herself up.
Nothing registers at first, the white spots are still fading, and then she sees Black Star and Tsubaki standing a few feet away. The roaring sweeping through her body swells to a crescendo when her eyes on fall onto Tsubaki.
It's never been possible for Maka to see auras unless she was looking into an aura mirror, but she can see Tsubaki's aura plainly now. A sliver of faded yellow, mixed with the silver of moonlight, is all she can make out of her soul; the rest is strangled by a blazing white mixed with darkened crimson.
She blinks again, and both Masamune and Tsubaki are gone.
Her body reacts before she can think twice and the corner of the cube bites into her palm. There is only the faintest pull of Tsubaki's soul on her perception now.
"What the hell?" Black Star scrambles forward, reaching out. "Tsubaki?" His hands swipe through the space where she stood. He whirls around, eyes wide. "She was right here, where did she go?"
"I don't know." Maka shoves the hand holding the cube behind her back, wheeling around until she is facing Masamune and Tsubaki, towards the quad. "But we have to find her, I'll go this way." She points in exactly the opposite direction of the demon. "You go that way and call me if you find her."
She glances at him when he doesn't answer. The panic on Black Star's face has dimmed temporarily; in its place is an expression of near-revelation, like he is seeing something he never was able to make out. "How are you so calm?" he asks, taking a step closer to Maka.
"Because losing my head won't help anyone." She ducks away, struggling to hold onto the fading pulse of Tsubaki's aura. "I'll call you if I find her."
She leaves no room for a reply, striding away before he can get a word out.
Hold on, hold on, hold on. Maka's heart thuds in time with her silent chant; memory gnaws at the marrow of her thoughts as she crosses the quad. Even though there is no one else in the quad, the darkened sky stares down at her with a malevolent gaze, and the buildings lining the quad seem to whisper to Maka indiscernible words that groan with the rot of things long dead. If she closes her eyes, she would be a child again, following an invisible, cold voice down to the basement.
The image of her ghosts, glimmering and fleeting, floats into her vision, and her eyes snap open again; that time in the basement was the first time she learned anything or anyone could leave, no matter how close, and the fear she felt then kindles back to life now. In the sky, the moon is only a sliver of a crescent, illuminating nothing, but Maka traces where the outlines of the buildings should be until it is safe to let her mind go. An exhale escapes from her lips as Tsubaki's aura strengthens.
An alley between the two arcade buildings opens up in front of Maka suddenly; she almost tips forward as she grinds to a halt, teetering on the tips of her toes to keep from falling forward, and listens hard. The groans of any poltergeists are absent, but in its stead is a heavy tension that oozes from the walls of the alley and into her bones. There are lights running down the alleyway, so she can see all the way through, something that wouldn't be concerning if it wasn't for the shadows clogging the walls.
There are too many shadows, even with the dumpsters lining the sides of the buildings. They emulate the shadows of the dumpsters and boxes in the alley, but they're stock-still-something animate pretending not to be. Maka's hand snakes into her bag, and the gaze of a thousand eyes immediately crawl over her.
She freezes, but nothing moves-the shadows are waiting.
"Maka?" A figure appears at the end of the alley. "Is that you?"
"Tsubaki?" Breath catching in her throat, Maka jolts into the mouth of the alleyway and skids to a stop, wresting the cube out of the bag. The flash of light as it transforms illuminates the alley, outlining Tsubaki. She stands at the very edge of the back alley, hands pinned to her sides. If Maka squints, she can see how stiff she is standing, like a mannequin.
Unlike her, Tsubaki hasn't moved at all.
She brings the scythe in front of her as she takes a wary step forward. "Tell me what happened."
"I-I don't know." Although she still doesn't move, Tsubaki's words crack with barely suppressed panic. "He was there, Masamune, and then everything went black."
Casting her perception as widely as she can, Maka relaxes slightly when she senses only Tsubaki's soul in front of her, although the surrounding shadows reeks of the demon. She glances back to Tsubaki. "And do you still see him now?" she asks cautiously.
"No." The volume of Tsubaki's voice lowers abruptly. "I just woke up and then I found you." She shifts for the first time. "What do you have in your hands?"
"I'll explain later." She strides forward, eager to leave. "Let's go-"
"You saw my dead brother, it doesn't take a genius to figure out your secret." The sharp bluntness hits Maka like a slap to the face.
"But you've seen a lot more than that, haven't you?" Tsubaki is close enough to see clearly. Her eyes are bulging, veins of bursting crimson standing out even from ten feet away, and her mouth is stretched wide, completely unmoving as she continues to speak. "Made such a mess that even the dead left you."
She stops dead in her tracks, ice clamping around her heart. "Masamune."
"Did you really think I was my pathetic sister?" Tsubaki's body slumps forward, arms and legs bending like they're on hinges. Her head snaps up with a crack, eyes finding Maka. "How could you mistake the soul of a demon for a feeble, meek like hers?"
"What did you do to Tsubaki?" she demands.
A cold laugh drips from her mouth. "My sister is so passive that she couldn't even hold onto her soul. All I had to do was walk in."
"Why are you doing this to your sister?" Maka's grip around the scythe tightens, but she keeps the blade lowered. "She loved you."
"And what good did that do?" Masamune's voice sharpens into a screech, and Tsubaki's body rushes forward. Her breath bears rakes across Maka's face. "Made her so submissive that she turned into a puppet that wouldn't choose anything unless I said I wanted to do it first."
"She tried to make you happy," she says. There is no good that can come out of arguing with a demon, but she can't forget the fact that she knew Masamune as a person long enough to slam the scythe into him. "It's not being passive, it's what she wanted to do."
"And after I died?" The whites of Tsubaki's eyes leach away, turning a viscous clear, although the red threads of her veins remain. "She turned into what she did, not a person." Her hands clench. "She was the one that should have died, if she wasn't going to be anything more than a shadow."
Surprise ripples through Maka at his reply; she tries to keep her voice gentle. "That's not for you to decide."
"Nothing in my life was ever for me to decide." Rage blooms into his voice again, bleeding fresh. "A dying body, no friends because I could never go outside, and a family that treated me like a china vase."
Tsubaki's body sways back, head flopping down. Out of the corner of Maka's eyes, the shadows come alive, falling mechanically from the walls. "It's my turn to take."
"What the hell?"
A voice from behind makes both Maka and Masamune look towards the mouth of the alley. From over twenty feet away, the blue of Black Star's hair is still distinguishable. Dread slides like a knife into Maka's stomach.
Black Star comes closer by several steps and then almost falls backwards as he stumbles back. His eyes are wide, ogling the scythe and then to Tsubaki's body, which is bent in all the wrong ways, distinctly unhuman. "What is that thing?"
A hiss creeps out of Tsubaki's mouth, but Maka acts before Masamune can do anything. The scythe hooks itself into her stomach as easily as butter, the point forcing itself free through her back. With a grunt, she forces the blade out and lets the scythe drop to the ground; the tears streaking down her face don't register till she feels them drip from her chin.
"That's not Tsubaki." Black Star's voice comes from next to her now. He stares down at Tsubaki's body, which lies crumpled on the floor. There is a brokenness to her body, and the malice from her face is gone, but at the same time, Maka senses a wrongness, although she can't tell what it is.
A hand grips her arm. "What happened?" demands Black Star. As hard as he is clutching Maka, his hand is shaking so badly that her own arm is shaking.
Maka's gaze moves from Tsubaki's face to the gash ripping open her stomach. "Do you believe in ghosts?"
Bafflement clouds Black Star's face. "You're asking me whether I believe in ghosts when you just stabbed our best friend?" There's a pause, and then Maka's arm is released as he throws his hands up in the air. "Or something that looks like our best friend?"
She doesn't answer, eyes tracing over Tsubaki's wound again.
There is no blood seeping out of the hole in her stomach.
Tsubaki's eyes fly open just as Maka forces Black Star back. A vicious grin rips across her face as her hand wraps around Maka's wrist, cold like ice. "It's going to take more than that to kill me."
A familiar darkness plunges over reality; Maka only gets a glimpse of Tsubaki floating in the murk before Masamune's face sweeps into her vision. "Don't you see how she's letting herself fade?" He seizes her by the shoulders. "She deserves death." Masamune's nails dig into her skin for a moment, and then he shoves her backwards.
Frigid air blasts against Maka's skin as the darkness lifts. She's on her knees somehow; dimly she registers Black Star calling her name while she gasps for breath. A light-headedness threatens to send her into a different kind of darkness.
Her legs tremble under her as she forces herself up, vision swimming as her eyes find Tsubaki, still on the ground.
The gash nearly cleaving her middle in two is gone.
"First Tsubaki, and now you." Black Star's panicked rambling finally becomes clear. "I thought she was dead, but then she wasn't," he vaguely gestures to the ground, evidently unable to look at Tsubaki, "and you were dead, but you weren't, and then you started floating-"
Maka clamps a hand over his mouth; the sea of thoughts in her head mixed with her worsening dizziness is a cacophony, crashing against the walls of her mind. "If I," she starts after a moment, "if I said this had to do with the supernatural, and I knew somebody who could help Tsubaki, would you give me the chance to show you?"
Black Star's eyes go the widest she's ever seen them, but he nods slowly.
"Good." Pulling her hand away, Maka carefully bends down to retrieve her bag, lying strewn out next to her scythe. She picks up both, and kneels next to Tsubaki, feeling Black Star follow suit.
Fishing in the bag, she takes out the reaper watch that she never returned to Marie and presses a button. Several seconds tick by before a familiar face fills the screen.
"Hey," she says before Kid can speak. She takes a deep breath, fingers drumming against the watch, eyes flicking from Black Star to Tsubaki. There is color in her face now, but her breathing is labored, like something heavy is sitting on her chest.
She swallows hard. "I need a favor."