For the life of me, I don't know what I was thinking. I never intended to revisit this again. Part of me thinks that I'm crazy for doing so. However, a certain conversation with the lovely Marsh of Sleep got both of our minds wandering off the beaten path, and rather than let these mental images stew and rot in a cell somewhere in the back of my brain, I wanted to see if I could actually make sense of some of the more technical ideas that were involved. Or some semblance of it. Or some shit like that.

If anyone is to blame, it would have to be the wonderful Madame Marsh. So I guess that's who I'll dedicate this to. For lack of a better reason for exposing the rest of the world to this crack. Beat her senseless with the smut stick, not me.

Love ya, dude!

More to come. Readers VERY VERY beware! Seriously, hide your children and your straight husbands. I have a feeling they wouldn't enjoy my brain juice much. Get ready for not a lot of sense and very very loose plot points of FAIL loaded with an abundance of OOCness.

CV

EDIT: Okay, Marsh isn't entirely to blame. But after an epic escapade of 24+ chapters of Amp gracing the internet, I think I can spare the pointing of a finger or two.

Another day in Death City. Another aftermath from a battle with the fucking Grand Poobah of all kishins that left the entire membership of Spartoi scrambling for cover in fear of their lives. Even with the power of the Death Scythes. Even with Soul Eater's new abilities. Each encounter continued to prove exceedingly difficult as Asura made it known in more ways than one how improbable their defeat of him actually was.

Some days, Maka wondered if he was just toying with them. Biding his time until he decided to engulf the entire planet in his madness and serve their entire team well done on a silver platter complete with a side of cheese and a white wine.

And on this particular day, her weapon had done nothing at all in improving her outlook for the future.

The obvious emotionless visage of indifference on her weapon's face pissed her off far more than she would ever care to admit. Turning away to tend to his other injuries, the broad expanse of the muscular back she'd come to know like an extension of her own being aimed in her direction could be no less a declaration of absolute defiance of her feelings than if he had squeezed her heart to a bloodless pulp with his own two hands. The weight of it literally made her sick to her stomach, and she leaned against the doorframe as if it were the last lifeline keeping her from a fate with the floor.

"So I was just supposed to let you die?"

She was met with silence, but his continued attention to the gashes on his arms gave an indication that he was still listening. This was the first time she'd gotten a good look at the result of their last tussle with Asura, but the gravity of his actions were absolutely branded all over his body, probably covering much more than she could see even with his shirt already off. She wanted to reach out, make sure he was still whole, and heal his entire form with kisses and caresses and demands that he never put himself in harm's way for her ever again. But at the same time was the overwhelming need to bash his stubborn face in for nearly making her lose him once more.

"Answer me, Soul!"

"We've been over this, Maka!" he shouted much louder than he needed to. "I am always prepared to die for my meister! That's the way it's always been and it's never going to change! No matter how fucking strong you think you are, I'll always be stronger!"

He turned on a dime to face her, and her eyes were magnetized to the telltale scar given to him by Ragnarok so long ago. It was just like back then. Only this time, complementing the old scar were fresh gashes and black bruises adorning the canvas of personal sacrifice that was her weapon's body. She had been the cause of each and every one of those brands of battle. Every last one of them.

And he didn't care.

A very unbecoming sob escaped her lips as her fist made contact with the door, resulting in a deafening BANG that shook the entire apartment and left a very impressive hole in the wood grain. Even Soul's eyes widened momentarily. Her other hand fisted in her hair, her face, her neck; anywhere to lessen the extreme tension building inside her petite frame. He was used to her tears, but he hadn't expected her to try and fight them off.

"You must have known how I would feel. I know you did." She leaned against the door again. "You didn't care about my feelings. Just like before, when…when Crona…when you nearly fucking died again!"

"I wasn't going to die, Maka," Soul stated with relative composure. "I walked away with a few scratches, and Stein didn't have to sew me up this time like a freaking stuffed doll. I'm a god damned Death Scythe, and I know what the hell I'm doing!"

"No you don't!" she cried. "Damn it, Soul, if I hadn't…" The thought made her words falter. Her entire body was quaking, knees knocking together at the mere prospect.

"If you hadn't what? Spill it, Maka. If you hadn't what?"

"If I hadn't sent out my soul's wavelength at him before that blast hit us, you wouldn't be here! You got in the way! And I-I couldn't…I couldn't protect you, too!"

"Bull shit! Since when have I needed to be protected by you? It's the weapon's job to protect the meister, not the other way around! I'm repeating myself again, you idiot-!"

Soul's expression suddenly morphed into something consisting of one part astonishment and other parts disbelief and exasperation. The disinfectant fell from his hand with a clatter to the floor, and for nearly a minute the extent of his strength went to simply keeping himself standing as he was suddenly overcome with a crushing sensation that threatened to drag his entire body to the ground beneath the sheer weight of it. His knees were bent and straining, his feet spreading further and further apart as he fought to remain vertical. His hands went to grip his head, as he felt that his brains could suddenly come pouring out of his ears at any second. His nose was bleeding. The most frightening thing of all was that the sensation only intensified as his meister made her way toward him from across the room.

Before he hit the floor, Maka shoved him onto his back on his bed as gently as possible. She was still crying, and it didn't help that she was once again the cause of his discomfort. Or in this case, nearly agonizing pressure. It was as if the Earth's gravity had tripled, yet his body was the only thing affected. The bed didn't bow beneath him like it would have had he now weighed a few hundred pounds more. The sheets were still rumpled and not flattened in the least. Yet the scythe could barely lift his head from the mattress, let alone open his mouth to demand Maka tell him what the hell was going on.

He didn't have to.

Still sniffling, Maka explained, "It's like Soul Force. I think. I don't know…"

"Wh-wh-when?…" he mouthed as best he could.

She loosened her metaphysical grip on him slightly, enough to let him breathe freely but still retaining as much control as she needed to let her point stand. Like the dedicated student that she was, she was silently experimenting with the level of control she had over this technique, and how much was actually required to keep the hold on her weapon intact. She was disheartened to discover that in his already-weakened state, it wasn't much.

"Shortly after we made you a Death Scythe. I…I don't know how. Or why. Maybe it has something to do with a part of Arachne's soul infusing into me from you. Like the black blood. She was a powerful witch, and…I've read that it can happen sometimes…"

"Fucking God, Maka. Why didn't you tell-"

"Because I didn't know what it was!" she shouted suddenly. "I didn't know how to use it until recently! And I didn't want you to know! You didn't need to! But it's okay, isn't it?"

Her tears sprang forth a new well of moisture, and gathering up the vestiges of her courage, she mounted his prostrate form on the bed, planting her hands on his chest and twining her legs with his to reestablish that connection that she so desperately craved. Her soul flowed into him, and she heard him gasp loudly as she essentially began fucking him with the brunt of her wavelength. It had been so long since he'd come to her, touched her, loved her, needed her, molded himself with her. He did absolutely everything for her, never asking for anything in return, and in the past she couldn't do a damn thing to protect what they had together. The future wasn't certain. There was no telling how much time they had left.

I love him so much. And…and I almost lost him. AGAIN.

Well no more.

Still maintaining her "hold" on him with her wavelength enough that he couldn't push her away, she climbed off of him long enough to turn him over onto his stomach. Despite the painful groaning that ensued on his part, she managed to get him flat again as she reached for the aloe on the corner of his nightstand. Squirting a heaping gob of the stuff in her palm (way more than necessary), she began rubbing it into the aggravated skin of his back in long, slow, almost sensual strokes, making sure to let her nails lightly scrape him where he wasn't cut in a feather-like massage that had him whimpering in pleasure. This was where the majority of his new injuries were showing. All along the posterior end of his body, when his back had been turned toward Asura to "shield" her from the blast.

All along his shoulders, neck, and dorsal side. Soul's skin was glistening with the gel, and he had to admit it felt abso-fucking-lutely divine.

Finished with that part of the task at hand, her hands suddenly went to his shorts, and pulled them down and off his legs in one swift motion. She sensed his hesitation the moment he felt it, and before he could protest or push her off him, she sent out more of her wavelength to still his movements.

All along his legs, thighs, and buttocks were more deep gashes. Some especially dark bruises around his hip bones that before had seemed minor when the majority of what she'd viewed had been from above the waistline of his shorts. She hadn't realized how all-consuming these marks were that scarred his beautiful body. He shifted nervously beneath her painstaking gaze, and he moaned when the sound of her sobs once again reached his ears. More than his pain, more than her father, more than Asura. This level of grief for his person was what he hated more than anything else in the world. To hear her cry.

"Soul, I'm so-sorry…" she sobbed.

"Not your fault, Maka," he said with his face buried in sheets.

"Maybe not, but…." She faltered. Suddenly, she was overcome with the realization and the possibility of doing, despite her previous level of anger, what she'd longed to do for him earlier.

Moving down the bed, she ran her hands up and down his calves, the residual gel on her hands leaving a contradictingly-enticing chill to the wounds there as the heat of her mouth began planting kisses all over the same flesh. Moving up to the sensitive place behind his knees, he shivered and literally shook beneath her as she added her tongue into the mix, alternating between languorous, quivering kisses with her lips, and excruciatingly-long, sensual caresses with her oral muscle that made him bury his face as far into the mattress as physically possible.

Her ministrations moved up the backs of his thighs, and he moaned. Then up further to the globes of his rear, and he whimpered helplessly. She spent far too much time on his glutes than he might have felt necessary, but he didn't really start complaining until her tongue moved to dip slightly into the crease of his ass.

Then his lower half came to life.

"Ma-maka?" His hips jumped beneath her.

She slowly sent out more of her wavelength to him, infusing it into the bond to calm his nerves as much as possible. She was as initially startled by her own actions as he. She could not tell what exactly came over her in that moment, other than the all-consuming need to make his pain go away by any means possible. She'd gotten lost in the feel of him, the sound of him, the smell of him…Was this how he felt when he consumed her, body and soul? She'd never really taken control when it came to the more intimate aspects of their relationship. Until now. But if the result was making Soul feel half as good as he'd made her feel, on multiple occasions, then she could definitely put a temporary placemat on her modesty.

Her mouth continued to do what was normally forbidden, dancing around that place that he really wished she wasn't touching. Not because he hated what she was doing. But because these sensations were so different, so foreign, so strange, so oddly wonderful that he didn't want to make her stop. That fact alone scared the living daylights out of him. Her hands moved tentatively between them to stroke his balls, slowly at first, and then with more vigor, and he squirmed uneasily beneath the absolutely overwhelming treatment of her hands and mouth. His already-engorged penis was trapped between the proverbial rock and a hard place, out of her reach and acting as his own personal kickstand beneath him. When her tongue made one fluid stroke starting from his balls and moving all the way up to the base of his tailbone, he officially became jelly.

"F-fu-fu-Maka! Huuuuhh…"

She was becoming increasingly fascinated at Soul's reactions to having her mouth….there. And his continuous lack of words and abundant quantities of…other sounds and exclamations. Especially when she accidentally grazed her teeth against him and he yelled something unintelligible into the mattress that sounded like some mutation of her name and a rather naughty obscenity that she'd certainly never heard him use before. At least not in her presence.

On to his back, where her hands once again went to work across its silky and slippery expanse. The aloe from his skin felt good on her chapped lips. Broad shoulders and lean waist drew her eyes to the subtle line leading down to the small of his back. She followed it, and began paving a path up his spine with her tongue, slow and agonizingly thorough. Soul cried out, and his form bowed beneath her, shifting her higher to the back of his neck, where she parted the hair at his nape and sent his senses reeling there, as well. Her hips settled over his own, fitting snugly against his compliant form, and Maka couldn't help but notice the similar position she'd taken over him. The one that mirrored his own when they made love in this bed. The thought of it sent tingles directly down below to her own pleasure center and she ground her hips into the back of his, arms splayed out on either side of his torso and head falling between his shoulder blades as she whimpered at the sensations caused by her own action.

Soul could feel her heat there, and it was altogether new and exciting in a way that left him completely unsure what to do with himself.

"Fuck, woman..."

He was enjoying this. The bond would tell her if he wasn't. The combination of her physical touch and the push of her soul into the experience had birthed a reaction that was not entirely suspected, but by no means unwelcome. Yet, it wasn't enough. He was floating, yes. But she wanted to make him soar. Send him flying so high that he might never come down again. His happiness meant more to her than her own life. She would test the limits of his ecstasy, as far as he would willingly let her.

Lust-filled and completely lost in the heat of her weapon, she released herself from him long enough to reach for the purple object in the drawer of his nightstand. It held a special place there ever since the night he had first sent her to the moon and back on their living room couch. She worried whether or not she was overstepping her bounds, or if what she had in mind would send both of them catapulting into a new level of intimacy from which neither could return. She prayed for the trust in herself to discern the difference.