Maka startled awake just as the cockerel down the street started to crow. She breathed hard and tried to force her racing heart to slow down. After rubbing her face and trying to shake the last tendrils of smoky panic from her mind, she forced herself out of her warm bed and into her worn clothes.
As she did though, she felt an unfamiliar weight in her pockets.
Confused, she pulled the object out of her skirt and was stunned to see a pocket watch. For a moment she blinked at it, before she remembered her mother pressing it into her hand as a last gift while on her deathbed, shortly after her father passed. The memories made her heart hurt and her eyes sting.
She sighed and closed her fist around the watch. She must be more tired than she thought to forget a thing like that, but that was what happened when you worked two demanding jobs on less than four hours of sleep.
She then proceeded to walk around the small room she called her home to wake her younger siblings. Blake put up more of a fight than usual, but the others were compliant enough. She helped the youngest (technically the youngest still living) two—Tsugumi and Jackie—dress, and then went over to their little stove to make porridge.
Once her siblings had been fed, she led them out of the house and watched as they split off into three groups: two for school, and one for their morning job helping Father Justin spit-shine his ornamentations. Maka thanked God above for giving them such a generous priest as she watched them go. It was so much better than sending them up chimneys.
After locking up she headed down to her day job at one of the local bakeries, to help make bread and stoke the fires. It was hard work, but it still paid pretty well and helped provide some free food her siblings would probably starve without. She could have done a lot worse.
Joshua Buttataki, the owner of the bakery, was a kind man and a good employer. He was a man she respected, not just for his work, but also because he had known her parents and helped in the immediate aftermath of their passing.
As always, he greeted her at the back door, where all the ovens were kept. "Good morning, Maka! Sleep well?"
She shrugged and smiled tiredly as she tied her apron behind her back. "As well as always Joe."
He hummed and grabbed a basket of bread to take out to the front of the shop. "I'll believe that when Father Justin stops preaching hellfire to non-believes. You look like shit."
Maka laughed a little and picked up a basket herself to help him. "It was a rough night."
"Well, that's what you get when you work at a pub like that." His expression became sympathetic. "Though, we all understand, with such a large family of young ones…If you only ever asked Maka, we could—"
"No," she said quickly, putting the basket down out front and quickly heading back to the ovens to start preparing dough. "I've told you before Joe, I won't accept charity. If I can work, I will. I won't be a burden."
She pretended she did not see Joe's pitying expression, or the sympathetic ones of the other bakers.
By the time dinner had rolled around, storm clouds had rolled in from the sea, mixing with the smog from the local factories to turn the sky dark enough to look like dusk, blocking nearly all of the noon sun's light. Maka's exhaustion had increased exponentially throughout the morning, and she felt that if she closed her eyes for more than a second, she would fall asleep on her feet.
She felt sweat slide down her back as she pushed her hands into the dough in front of her, folding it over and over again. Her head started to spin and eventually she had to stop to steady herself, and try and catch her breath.
The back room she was working in suddenly felt far too hot, and she felt suffocated. She ripped her apron off and stumbled out of the door, trying to find somewhere cooler, somewhere she could actually breathe.
She went down the alley from the back to the front street, bracing herself against the wall as she went until she made it. She sucked in deep breaths and her felt a little clearer, though her throat was now parched.
Down the street she could see the pub she worked her nights in, serving and making money off hosts who were complacent with their purses. If her delirious mind, it made more sense to try and go there for a drink instead of back into the hot bakery. It would be cooler there, so early in the day there would be hardly anyone there. Maybe she could even close her eyes for a little bit.
Pushing herself off the wall, she set off down the street, trying her best to move out of the way of people, but this was made difficult by her spinning head. The ground almost felt like it was moving beneath her as she walked, and her head started spinning even faster, like the spinning top Papa had given her as a small child, before all the others came.
She bumped into someone, a man who was tall and broad, with stunningly pale hair, and when she turned around to apologise, the ground titled suddenly as her legs gave out, and her world became darkness.
The real world came back slowly, easing in and out of her mind. Sound returned first and she heard someone bustling above her quietly. Then came touch as something wet and cool pressed against her forehead, and she registered that she was lying on something soft.
For a brief moment she thought she might be home lying on a…couch? But as she blinked and opened her eyes, the thought faded away and she forgot it.
Above her hovered Mrs Marie Stein, her second employer and co-owner of the Hammer and Scythe pub. She could recognise the room around her as one of the bedrooms above the main tavern.
Marie sighed and sat back once Maka opened her eyes completely, and smiled weakly.
"You gave use quite a bit of a scare there Maka, passing out like that. Why, poor Mr Evans though you had died in his arms, he was so panicked!" she exclaimed, laughing a little, though it sounded forced and the worry was still clearly etched on her face.
Maka's face scrunched up in confusion. "Mr Ev…?" she trailed off when she noticed the other person in the room, a young man with extremely pale hair, the one she had bumped into earlier. "Oh."
Mr Evans cleared his throat awkwardly. "Um. Hello."
"Mr Evans is a regular here during the day," Marie supplied helpfully. "He had just left when he found you." Behind her Mr Evans nodded.
Maka swallowed and began to push herself upright. "Thank you for your help Mr Evans, and for your help too Marie, but I need to get back to the bakery, I—"
Marie grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back gently. "No, no, you stay there, you're not well. Frank sent Victor to go tell Joshua where you are, just rest now. You've been working yourself into the ground."
"But I have to," she tried to argue. "My family needs me."
Marie scowled. "No, you don't, if you'd just ask for help—"
"I don't want to be a burden!"
"You're not a burden Maka, for God's sake!" Marie blurted. "We're your godparents, it's our job to help. Frank thought it would be best at first to do as you asked and just let you work, but now we can't just stand by and watch you work yourself into your grave." She leaned down and cupped Maka's face tenderly. "We owe your parents more than that."
Maka felt something well up inside her that felt an awful lot like tears, but before they could get there, Marie leaned back and clapped her hands. "Now, I'll go get you some food and water so you can eat before you get a little rest. Mr Evans?" she said, turning to the man who had taken a step closer to the bed when Maka had tried to get up. "Can you stay and watch over her? She's rather persistent."
Maka pouted a little at that.
Mr Evans stood up straighter and nodded, before turning his gaze back to Maka. "I've got nowhere else to be."
Marie's smile grew into a grin and after saying a soft, "I'll be right back," she left the room.
For a moment Mr Evans stood on the other side of the room watching her, before approaching her slowly, taking a chair standing against the wall with him so he could sit beside her.
"How are you feeling?" he began slowly, keeping the chair at a reasonable distance from the bed.
Maka shrugged. "I've had worse, I guess. Still, not too good. Still tired."
He hummed in understanding and they both fell into silence.
After several minutes of fighting off sleep, Maka spoke in an effort to stay awake. "Thank you again Mr Evans for—"
"Soul," he interrupted. "My name is Soul."
She blinked for a moment before coming back to herself. "Oh, uh, well, then thank you Soul for helping me. Many would have just left me on the street."
Soul made a face that was almost like a glare before smoothing his features back into a neutral expression. "No need to thank me for being a decent human being," he said coolly.
Another pause ensued. This time it was Soul who broke the silence.
"Marie said you worked here?" he said, tone making it sound like a question. "But you mentioned a bakery?"
Her lips quirked up a little. "I have a little brother, and lots of little sisters. Feeding many mouths takes a lot of money, and most of them are too young to work. So I work for them."
His eyebrows furrowed. "But your parents?"
She felt the prickling behind her eyes return and turned her head so she was facing up towards the ceiling. "They died the winter before last. I was old enough to finish schooling and go to work so we didn't end up in an orphanage or work house. So we wouldn't get separated." She cleared her throat hurriedly before her voice could crack. "The little ones wouldn't have been able to handle it." She did not add that neither would have she.
"Oh," he said simply. After a moment he continued, "But working yourself to death won't help them either. They'll be left on their own and the responsibility will pass on to the next oldest."
She turned her head to watch him, and saw he was looking down at something clasped in her hands.
"You speak from experience?" she asked softly.
He laughed a little, the sound hollow and dark. "No. Haven't got any family to speak of, which I suppose is a blessing. No responsibility or shi—stuff like that."
She could not help but giggle when he tried to cover his swearing. "You don't need to change your language around me, I work in a pub. I've heard much worse than a simple 'shit'."
He laughed with her, this time the sound a little more pleasing. "Fair enough then." After another pause he said, "What's it like? Having a large family I mean."
She shrugged. "Hectic. Exhausting. Frustrating as all hell when once acts out and then they all do because they think they can get away with it. But it's…nice. I have a family that loves me as much as I love them." She felt more stinging in her eyes. "They're all I have left."
From the corner of her eyes she watched him chew on his lip. "I know my advice might not help, but do you have something you could sell? It'd give you some money and let you take it easy for a bit while you recover."
She snorted and shook her head. "All we have is the house, the clothes on our backs, and meagre food supplies. And each other. Nothing I could ever sell…" She trailed off as she stuck her hand in her pocket, where the pocket watch still miraculously was. "Well I do have this," she whispered as she pulled it out.
He leaned closer and inspected it. "It certainly looks like it could fetch a pretty penny, with the right sort of work." But even as she said it, his voice turned a little soft and sounded far away.
"I could never sell it," she breathed, tracing the front design. "My-my parents…"
She trailed off again as something wriggled in the back of her mind, like she had forgotten to do something simple but important, like look the back gate.
She caught movement from her side and saw Soul reveal his own watch, the thing he had been clasping tightly in his hands. "I get it," he murmured, still in that far away voice. "My brother, he—."
He stopped himself and his gaze met hers sharply.
The cursive design on the front of his watch matched hers, though his watch was tarnished gold to her dulled silver. They moved their hands closer together, till they were almost touching. And then, simultaneously, they pressed the button at the top of their watches and watched as they sprung open.
Bright light flashed, and Maka knew no more.