A/N: I don't know if it's clear kinda what's...going on in Stein's head in the battle. I hope it's clear.

Part 5

As if a door had been opened, suddenly the Invisible Man became visible, and about thirty feet distant stood an older but familiar figure. Taller and broader than Spirit, but as pale as Death himself. His flame-colored hair he now wore shaved so closely to his skin it was nearly invisible, giving a strange orange cast to his head. But his red eyes were exactly the same, staring back into his with that arrogant, knowing look.

Stein's grip on the staff tightened. He knew he should strike while he had the chance. But...

"You were one of them..." Spirit said in revelation. "You're one of the students that saw it happen... You watched him kill Sachiko. Why didn't you tell me?"

Stein's hands were sweating. He adjusted his grip.

"I'll let you join me now. You still want to, I can see it. How can you not, with that boring, monotonous life they've trapped you into?"

Stein raised the scythe and took a step forward, but in an instant Griffin was gone again, invisible and silent.

Stein grit his teeth and rushed for the spot, swinging wildly, but he only cut air. He swung again behind him, the blade slicing through the space with a force that would be deadly if it made impact. But the man was gone.

"What are you doing!? This is reckless. We need to get out of here, we can't beat him like this."

"Quiet!"

Stein closed his eyes again, his teeth bared as he listened. A bead of perspiration dripped down his temple and he told himself it was the desert's heat as the sun slowly rose. Not nerves. Not old desires surfacing. Just the heat, and nothing more.

He adjusted his grip again as he nearly lost hold of Spirit as his hands continued to sweat. Since when had the scythe become so heavy?

"You know your life is a waste," Griffin said. Now he seemed to be in front of the dry slough. His voice was echoing less from there, and Stein kept his eyes closed as he took a step nearer the sound. "After graduating you obeyed Death's whims for a few years, and then what? You left to do what you wanted to do, but what do you have to show for it? Years, alone in that lab. All alone. And all for nothing. Your life is meaningless."

Stein took another step and stopped, not wanting to appear as if he was advancing.

"If I can drive him farther from the butte, then I can pinpoint his location more accurately," he said in a whisper.

"It's not going to work! Let it go, Stein. We'll get him when we have a better plan."

"Together we could have been the greatest in academy history. We could have surpassed Death himself, and installed a new order to this world. But no, you wanted to make a death scythe. Lured by the lies of the glory that would come with the feat. Well, congratulations. You did it. The DWMA's greatest meister, they call you. And what of it?"

Stein felt his fingers slipping and held onto the staff tighter. For all of Griffin's apparent spying, he had apparently missed the part where he and Spirit had parted ways for over a decade. He felt the tension in his former partner rising after Griffin had made the error, and suddenly realized it had been rising ever since their old classmate had revealed himself with the vicious attack.

And he further realized, opening his eyes with a start, that the invisible voice was approaching.

"What have you done in all those years Death gave you your freedom? Doing 'what you wanted to do.' Well, now you're back, shackled into the same, boring cycle all over again. Did you ever spend the time wondering what could have been? Knowing what you could have been, if you'd come with me?"

Stein's fingers slipped again, and he planted the base of the staff in front of him in the sand. He wiped his palms one after the other on his coat and then held onto Spirit tightly until his knuckles were white.

"I screwed up."

"Don't cry, Maka. Papa's here."

"If I had only listened! Soul was right. He said we should run away. He knew we couldn't beat someone that strong. If only I had listened to Soul... Then he wouldn't be...wouldn't be..."

"Don't worry, Maka. Stein will patch him up, good as new, he's good at that."

Spirit looked across the back of the ambulance at Stein, his expression unreadable as he stroked Maka's back.

"Papa promises."

"Stein? Stein? Hello, you in there?" Naigus said.

Stein set the needle and sutures down on the tray and took off one glove, dropping it in the waste bucket. He reached up and turned the screw in his head slowly, once...twice.

The fight against the Demon Sword had been elating. A part of himself that he'd been forced to forget for years felt alive again in those moments when he resonated with the soul that was as familiar to him as his own.

Except that it wasn't anymore. That fight had just been an echo of the past.

Stein moved his hand briefly to the scar on his face, and an involuntary shiver raced across his skin. It was tender, as if fresh, and he wondered if his old wounds hadn't bled and he had just failed to notice.

They weren't in sync, he and Spirit. Their souls were still worn and frayed at the seams due to the choices he'd made, meant for their good, but choices that ultimately drove them apart.

He'd sacrificed a gift he'd never thought possible for himself to pursue his own ambitions. And what did he have to show for it?

He craved dissection as if it were the only spring in a vast desert. He knew it was madness, and for five years he had let the tantalizing hints of something greater be his excuse to bring that madness down upon his partner. Upon someone he had allowed himself to trust, and for reasons he never understood, had reciprocated that trust.

But now, thanks to him...

'I screwed up.'

Thanks to him, the only real friend he'd ever had lie dying. Unless he could do the opposite of what every fiber of his being drove him toward.

"Stein? Stein!"

His hand had returned to the screw, turning and turning, the installation being the self-induced permanent punishment he had judged himself deserving of for his crimes.

If he had only listened to the correct voice. If he had ignored the distraction of Griffin's verbal attack upon his life, and the futile, vain promises...

The weapon had followed selfish ambition, and it had transformed the revolving door of madness into a bottomless pit. It had cost him the potential life he could have lived. And it had cost him the life of his meister.

Stein had walked in and out of that door too many times in his lonely existence. It had already cost him his partner and friend...

Had it cost him everything?

"Stein!"

Naigus had set her gloved hand on his shoulder now to snap him out of it, and he stopped turning the screw to look down at where her hand lay. Spirit's blood was once again on his shoulder.

"How ironic."

"...What is?"

Spirit was right, and he had known it at the time. The argument itself was bitter evidence that they weren't in sync anymore.

Spirit never argued with him in battle. Even when he could feel the wavering disagreement in his soul, he never argued and never questioned. He allowed Stein the lead as meister and only spoke up if he felt it was important, which would clue Stein in to listen. Likewise, Stein didn't argue with him. They kept each other in check, as it should be, and the unity of their wavelengths had at one time been the envy of all at the academy. The trust they had in one another that he failed to fully comprehend was at its utmost when they were fighting, when resonating.

But it had been absent that morning. It was his fault. In a horrifying anti-climax to everything he had worked toward— now, just like Griffin, he had killed his meister.

He turned the screw.

"I screwed up. If I had listened..."

"Stein."

Naigus released his shoulder, and he watched as she changed her glove and then offered him a clean one as well.

"He's not dead."

Stein released a trembling breath. He let the slow rhythm of the heart monitor be his new point of focus and looked down. There was no beauty here, in the deep wounds inflicted through jealousy and hate.

He broadened his focus, away from the details of the injuries and everything beneath the skin that called to him and to the knowledge that this was the body of his friend. He let his eyes rise to Spirit's face again, tight with pain even through the anesthetic.

"He needs you."

He met Naigus's hand over Spirit's body and took the glove. His own life still would not have a happy ending. But if it was within his control...at least it would not end like Griffin's.