Disclaimer: I don't own it anfjsndjgnjnsndg
Author's Note: First I'd like to thank SilverStella, EvilInsideandOut, Sincerely The Sign Painter, Kountry101, and Lucy Ashley from Fairy Tail for the reviews for the last chapter. :)
Second, just as a forewarning this one has a lot of dark moments, and vague spoilers for the Book of Eibon arc in the manga... which is somewhere past chapter 60, I think? xD It's up there but I promise it's not a huge spoiler. Just Maka dealing with Giriko essentially threatening her and hurting Soul at some point in time that is really only pivotal to their relationship, and not the Soul Eater plot itself.
I really have to write some lighter drabbles/etc. because I'm starting to depress myself.
...Well, enjoy!
Maka Albarn does not feel fear, she tells herself. Fear leads to insanity and insanity leads to inhumanity, she realizes. She's seen it. She's skipped fear and gone straight to insanity once. She does feel that, and it's the worst, she thinks. She remembers the black blood swallowing up Soul. So to avoid the black blood consuming both her soul and her partner's, she does not feel fear. Fear is like her shadow that stands close behind her, but reaches only the edges of her feet. She only stands on it and senses it, nothing more.
She senses her fingers as they thrum the table, as well. She senses how her breathing elevates at the dining room table without warning, like a glacial wind on a sticky summer day. She feels her pupils dilate and her mouth dry up, feels her teeth chomping on her bottom lip. Her heart hammers and it feels like the world might suck her in from her wooden floors. She has a sensation of sinking she cannot quite explain, only feel. Maka senses her thighs when they start to quake; it starts at her toes where she knows the shadow is lurking and moves up to her arms and forces her to drop the fork into her plate with an unsightly clatter.
She knows Soul yells, but not what it means. Her ears are ringing and that is all she knows. Her world is blurred. She sees images of an ugly man with chainsaws attached to his body slicing through her best friend; blood sprays from him like ink from a pen split in half. She leaves without warning, so quick that she even forgets to lock the door behind her.
She never forgets to lock the door. It keeps the other shadows out.
Maka Albarn does not rely on men. She learned that from her father. She does not trust them; she cannot. She brushes them off just as she does fear, and loathing. She does not have time for their foolish, lust-driven antics. She only has time for running, and running, and running.
Running until her breathing outdoes her heart and it constricts her small lungs and her world turns as black as the blood boiling in her partner's veins somewhere deep, somewhere she cannot reach. Something she cannot heal. Something she cannot control.
She cannot control men. She cannot control the blood. She's lost control and it makes her off-kilter.
She could not control it because she had feared. She fears she is not good enough for her partner and then almost lost him completely. That's also why she cannot feel fear, and why she cannot rely on him, or anyone. If she fears she'll lose him. She'll lose everything with fear within her.
Even though his strong, scarred arms swooping her up and carrying her safely home is what she feels, and it feels amazing.
Maka Albarn is sleepless only because of nightmares. Nightmares are not fear. Bad dreams are an outlet for fear so she appreciates their dark beauty, like she would an obscure work of art. Like Soul's demonic piano pieces and his sardonic smiles.
She wakes up screaming because she's smart, booksmart, and so her dreams are naturally more vivid, more realistic and tangible. She uses her imagination often when she reads so her dreams have more color, and last longer after she stirs from a deep sleep in a cold sweat. She can nearly feel Giriko's blades on her own skin and his rotten, sour breath in her face as he presses her against a wall and threatens her innocence with Soul struggling and howling in pain somewhere in the background because she felt the fear, even if it lasted only a few minutes.
Bags appear under her eyes like bruises because she stays up too late studying for the exams next week. It's stress, not fear. It's all stress, she tells Soul, but she knows he's not convinced. He's been hounding her for weeks, and almost breaks down her door every single time she wakes up clutching her sheets like they're her lifeline. But she never lets him in.
She cannot forget to lock the door, after all. Not again. That's how the anxiety starts to creep in, a skeleton in the closet becoming human again.
Maka Albarn feels like she's sinking into her bed because she's sleeping in a bad position. She feels like she's sinking into her own skin because she has pins and needles, that's all.
Maka Albarn skips a meal because the stress of exams is giving her heartburn, that's all. She skips a night out with friends because she's tired. She'll be able to sleep now that exams are done for the semester.
Maka Albarn wakes up on the cool bathroom floor in a daze because the exams were rough. Because it's that time of month next week. Because Soul isn't home and she's not used to being alone in this old apartment, with its eerie creaks and leaks.
Maka Albarn can be alone, though. Because she does not fear and she does not rely on men, even when she starts to shake again as if Death City is crumbling like a ghost town, despite how it sings with life beneath her through humming lampposts and distant, tinkling laughter.
She gets up and splashes icy water in her face to snap her out of it. She recovers quickly, because she's Maka Albarn.
She sees Giriko smirking at her in the mirror and laughs.
She curls up on her bed in her lime-striped pajamas and stares out the window at some faraway point with no real distinction or silhouette. She takes comfort in the window, because she's looking outside at the lively city, and not at a reflection full of chainsaws and not at her brain cobwebbed with blood-saturated memories.
After an hour of this she feels it again as if her shadow is replacing her real body: heartrate first, breathing next, and then the shaking. She cannot control the shaking and that makes her tremble more.
"Damn it, Maka. Stop hiding this and face it. It's not cool to shut me out of your problems when you're so bent on being in mine."
Maka's eyes are clouded, and wide as she turns to her partner shrugging off his jacket in her doorway. She forgot to lock the door again. She's glad, for some reason. Because when he wanders over wordlessly and holds her as tight to him as he can, her shaking slows.
Because when he strokes her still-damp hair and breathes against her neck, her heartrate is erratic in a pleasant way.
"Breathe from your stomach," he says, his quiet voice like a guiding light for her asunder soul. "Hold it in for three seconds, and slowly let it out."
Soul reaches around and holds both her hands, and they're so close she feels as if he's become a part of her, as if he can sense all she is sensing, too. She lets her eyelids flutter close and does as he instructs, allowing him to become a part of her problem, allowing him into her tiny world that seems to grow smaller each time she pushes him, and fear, away.
Maka Albarn wakes up in bed refreshed and next to her partner. She forgot to lock the door, and that's fine, because only Soul lives here and he can come in whenever he wants. And even though he's a man, she can trust him. Because he's not just any man, he's Soul. He's her Soul and he felt what she felt and he's as much a part of her life as her heartbeat, equally as familiar.
Though she cannot help but reach for a tissue to wipe the slobber away before it hits her pillow. There are some exceptions even she will never tolerate, even if she does love him just the slightest bit.
He rolls over and catches her off-guard with his blank, too-serious expression.
She frowns in response.
"Maka," he starts, and his voice reminds her of being scolded, and she feels she might shy away from him again. Maka Albarn does not do reprimands well. It's on the fear level to her.
He reaches over and grabs her hand, as if he knew she considered escaping. He knows her too well, even without holding her close.
"You're afraid," he says with conviction. "What are you afraid of?"
She shakes her head. "I don't fear."
He rolls his red eyes in exasperation. "Just admit it. You're afraid of something, and hiding it is making you fall apart like this. What is it? You know you can't lie to me."
She sighs, because he's right. He'll find out sooner or later if she doesn't just admit it now, both to him and herself. Because she's been trying to conceal it from herself, too.
"Giriko," she mumbles, close to inaudible.
He opens his mouth but she stops him. "Almost killing you because I was afraid I wasn't good enough for you when I know that's not true, not after last night. So I told myself that I don't fear anything. I never would again because it put your life in danger. But I am. I see him everywhere. Even in my sleep, I see him killing you and it kills me."
"I used to have panic attacks," he says out of nowhere, and she remains quiet. She's almost eager, in a way, because he never mentions even the smallest fragment about his past and she wants to put the puzzle together, just like he does with her. She's missing so many pieces even though she can envision the whole picture.
"Because I bottled things up like you. And it made me sick and unhappy all the time. My parents wanted me on suicide watch for a while." His eyes drift to the window. "Not that they would've cared, either way, not with the success my brother put our family name in." Soul's intense gaze returns to hers, and she feels her cheeks warm. "But I came here, and I met you, and everyone else, and I knew that I couldn't do that to myself anymore. Because I have people who care and who don't want to see me destroy myself slowly."
It's silent for a long stretch of time, but a quaint sort of silence that only close friends can have without awkward tension or a need to fill it. They don't need to apologize or argue or anything. They just need to be in the same room. They're connected, so they don't need any more words to understand what is meant by any of what they said. They both drop the subject and it's okay. They're okay. Maka Albarn and Soul Eater Evans are healing. Because they do fear and they do trust. And it hurts. Because they leave their doors open and lights on until they know the other person is sound asleep.
She lays down next to him and they stay like that for a long enough time for someone outside of them to paint a picture, without needing all the pieces to get it just right.