CONTENT WARNING: The entirety of this chapter is written from the perspective of someone experiencing a panic attack and dissociating.
Somehow, Soul knew he could never come back from this now.
They had an audience- an audience filled with people who thought they knew Soul- Soul, just a guard from Eibon- Soul, the guard who always wore that stupid smile on his face like a proud symbol- Soul, the boy who came to Eibon with nothing and built his way up from there- Soul, a liar hiding behind a mask.
He was scared to look around, scared to find a familiar face looking at him- scared to see their reactions.
He kept his eyes trained on Medusa as shouts began from the hallway.
He could make out Stein screaming- Ox ford shouting orders- Kilik crying something out-
But he couldn't make out what was going on anymore as his vision zeroed on Medusa.
He knew that this whole goose chase must have driven her to the brink of madness- but this? Showing up to another kingdom, threatening their people? This was a war crime- and she didn't even care.
All she cared about was him, and that alone was a terrifying thought.
"You may have all these bastards fooled that you're some jewel in the rut, but you have never fooled me. I should have finished you ass that day I caught you! Pressed my hands into that pretty throat of yours!" She raises her sword to him, a cackle leaving her. "I'd love to hear for you to beg for me to stop! I loved the way you teared up, and to think, I went easy on you!"
With another laugh, she kicked out her boot and dropped her foot onto Ragnarok's back, causing him to cry out in pain. He felt Kid flinch in his clutches.
"Don't play coy with me, Soul. Go ahead, finish him. Kid has always been waiting for his execution! Finish him, you incompetent fuck! Maybe you should have done it right the first time!"
Soul's jaw drops as he lowers the knife. He can feel Kid shaking against him as another wave of guilt hits him. Somehow, he knows holding a hostage wont work against her.
"Don't make a fool out of yourself now," She tilts her head, eyes traveling across the room, " We've got a big audience, Solomon. Make this easy and just let me finish you. We can step outside if you'd like? That way these beautiful people don't have to witness your guts spilling!"
Soul licks his bottom lip asz he pushes Kid away from him with force. The guard tumbles, gasping as he drops to the floor.
"You're a sick, twisted person," he grumbles, clenching the knife in his hand a little harder. "You should have been the one I shot that night."
She raises an eyebrow at him. "Oh, yeah? Where was that energy four years ago?" She turns her head down to Ragnarok, pushing her boot into his back with force. "You had three targets, Soul, and yet, you went after him? What, did you not like his romantic gestures?"
Kid stood from the floor, raising a hand to Medusa. "That's enough. I told you countless times we weren't anything."
"And yet, you still took the fall for him, you spent all this time searching for him again to save him, and he just apred your damn life." With confidence, Medusa drove her sword into the floor beside Ragnarok's head, driving a roar from the crowd. "Come here, Soul! You can be the one on the other edge of this sword. I want to finish your little romance story with a Romeo and Julieete ending. Kid would surely appreciate that, wouldn't he?"
A mix of heat and tears were collecting on Soul's cheeks now. With a terrified expression, he turned back to the crowd, all eyes on him.
Maka's eyes on him.
Blackstar's eyes on him.
All he could see was betrayal.
With a breathy gasp, he turned his head back to Medusa.
What did he have to lose now? He'd just had everything ripped from him in front of a whole audience- her persona- his safety net- his love. How could Maka ever look at him the same after this.
What was she even going to think?
God- what were her parents, the king and queen of Eibon, going to think?
Soul didn't want to know.
No, no he didn't need to know.
It'd only hurt her more-
With a shaky step, he was stepping forward, capturing Kid's arm and Wes's at the same time.
"I swear to God Medusa if you say we were something one more time, I'm going to lose it." Soul warned, pulling both arms at his sides.
"Yeah? What're you going to do about it?" She better her eyelashes innocently, leaning against the hilt of her sword. "C'mon, don't be shy, show our audience the type of person you really are, Soul. Crack. Do it. Show them you're only here because you're selfish."
Soul clutches onto the two arms a little harder.
He doesn't know what to do anymore, so he goes with the only tactic he knows.
"I thought you were done with me, and yet here you are, chasing my ass like it's the only thing you know. It's kind of pathetic, honestly."
At the comment, Medusa's face falters.
"You spent four years doing what, chilling out? I had the smallest head start over you, and yet, I managed to outsmart you for four years? What do you gain out of this, adding another kill to your list?"
"Unlike you, Soul, I finish what I start!"
In a swift movement, she was pulling a dagger from her back and throwing it his way. With a scream, he pushed both Kid and Wes to the floor, causing both to yelp.
The knife doesn't find it's target, he finds, as it lands into the pillar behind him- right where Wes had been standing.
His heartbeat quickens.
"I am not letting all those years of pain and torture I withstood go to vain," She informs him, digging her heel harder into Ragnarok's back, "This is all your fault. If you didn't leave, we wouldn't be here now, would we? I'll be damned if I don't get my revenge."
With a fast hand, she pulled another knife between her fingers and flicked her wrist-
Another knife pelted into the pillar behind him.
"Awe, don't dodge me now," she cackled, pulling another knife as she pulled her sword up. "You were so willing to let me kill you all those years ago? What, do you have cold feet now? Something keeping you here?" She aimed her knife to the floor, her eyes landing on Wes. "What do I have to do to get to you? Kill him? Kill Kid? What would break you enough, Soul?"
He can't help but scoff as he takes a step closer to her. "Nothing would break me at this point."
With a testing smile, she turns her head. "I want to have a little fun before this night ends, Soul. How about you watch every single person in this room perish before your very eyes. All their blood will be on your hands. Wouldn't that be a perfect way to go out?"
In a fleeting thought, he wonders how she thinks she could kill in a room like this? Surely, the second she stepped away from Ragnarok, the guards would be on her ass.
But the next thought that comes to mind is Maka. Just Maka.
Would she target her?
He can tell dread overtakes his face when he finds Medusa smiling.
"Oh, that would totally break you, wouldn't it? She turned to the crowd with a sick smile, raising her sword to them. "You have to care about someone here, right? Someone has got to be important enough to shatter everything!"
Before he can answer, he finds why no guards have attacked yet.
Several people dressed in similar clothes step into the room behind her, completely suited up with weapons at hand, blood dripping from their clothes.
His thoughts raced to the guards and knights that should have been in the hallway with them-
"You're about to get first-class seating to a massacre-"
The group behind her begin to step into the room and suddenly the guards are moving forward.
"Who's going to be first, Soul? Should we start with your fellow guards, or start with the royals-"
"Stop!" he calls out shakingly.
There's a room filled with defenseless people- defenseless royals who had a purpose. It wasn't worth putting them at risk- putting his fellow guards at risk- God, he could only think of what just happened in the hallway-
How did they manage to get past the guards? Who out there was hurt enough that they just let Medusa slink right in here?
"If I'm the only person you want to kill, then do it."
Common sense flies out the window as he puts his hands in the air, the knife he held dropping to the floor beside his feet. He can see both Wes and Kid getting to their feet, but he keeps his eyes solely locked on the assassin.
"No one else needs to get hurt because of me."
"Why not? You didn't seem to care about that when you shot Kid, or left your people in disasters!"
She shouts bitterly, rubbing her foot into Ragnarok's spine. "Maybe I want you to feel some of that pain too, but I mean, if you're offering yourself up, how could I say no?"
With careful footsteps, Soul walked his way to Medusa, ignoring both Wes and Kid's attempts at grabbing him.
At least his death meant sparing a hundred lives.
At least then, he could finally stop worrying.
At least he could be sparing Maka's life.
As he takes another step toward Medusa, he can hear his brother shout, "You don't have to do this!"
He's a step away from her grasp now, close enough to head Ragnarok's panting on the floor beneath him.
"Promise me if I just, let you kill me, you'll leave everyone else in this ballroom alone."
"Typically I hate making promises, but I guess you're right. No one else here deserves to suffer for the likes of you."
The next events happen in a whirl of confusion. Ragnarok is kicked away from Medusa, a blood-stained hand is wrapped around his shoulder, and someone in the crowd screams his real name.
His heart drops when he sees that maka is standing in front of Blackstar, pupils blown.
"Oh," Medusa gasps from his side, digging her fingernails into his shoulder. "Well isn't this a surprising turn of events? You do have someone who cares for you, I see."
With a clenched jaw, he stares Maka down with as mucus seriousness as he can muster. The Princess is standing there, tears welling in her eyes as she looks to him desperately- her hands are balled into fists- her arms shaking.
"No, I'm just her guard."
Blackstar reaches out to grab Maka but ultimately fails as the Princess pulls away from his grasp frantically, looking like she'd burn from just the grasp of Blackstar's fingertips.
Soul doesn't miss the way Blackstar reaches behind his back, his hand wrapping around the hilt of his sword as he reaches for the Princess again.
"And your Princess here, she knows your real name, huh?"
Soul locks his jaw, and turns his eyes away from Maka. "It was a slip up- she only cares because I'm her last resort of protection-" He tries to reason with her, stumbling over his words unconvincingly. His heart is hammering against his ribs bruisingly now, and it's making him sick to his stomach.
"I don't think that's the case." She sighs, digging her fingernails into his shoulder, "see, the difference between you and me, Soul, is I dont give a fuck. I don't care who I hurt, I don't care who I have to kill, I don't care how many crimes I commit- I have no remorse."
She brings her sword to his chest, a sharp grin on her face as she drags the cold steel of the blade across his shirt, tearing it at the seams as she makes her way towards his neck.
This close, he can basically see the crazy in her eyes.
"I don't care about the consequences anymore, and because of that, I will get what I want finished, unlike you."
Grabbing hold of his shirt with an iron fist, she drops her sword.
"Eruka, get me that damn Princess over there!"
The room explodes into chaos.
A woman from behind Medusa stands, giddy with excitement as she unsteaths her swords. Her eyes settle on Maka, the grin of the devil kissing her lips as she starts moving.
Finally, the guards that have all but waited patiently for the right moment to strike are thrown into motion.
Soul, for a good few minutes, thinks he's dead as the world becomes a blur of nothingness.
There are a handful of things he's able to pick up.
Medusa, pushing the tip of her blade into his collarbones, slicing the sharp blade into his chest- its not deep enough to cause too much harm- but its deep enough to have him gasping out in pain as his vision sways with white as his shirt is stained with his own blood. She's holding him by the collar of his shirt- pushing him away from people-
Guards flooding into the room, swords clashing on the dance floor.
He can hear familiar voices- he can see familiar faces- but he's pretty sure he's been hit on the head with the hilt of Medusa's sword in the mix of it all.
He's looking to the floor, a hand on the back of his neck as he stares down at his hands which have been covered in his own hot blood.
He feels like puking- he knows he's stronger than this- but something doesn't feel right-
And suddenly someone's crashing into him- Medusa is screaming- there are familiar hands grabbing him, pulling him up, holding him by his chest.
"Soul!" Someone calls desperately. "Get up, c'mon. Get up-"
There's someone holding onto his back, but in front of him, as his vision begins to clean, stands Stein.
"Get out of here before she finds you." He speaks loudly through the screaming around him, "or your head is as good as gone. Don't stop running, ever. You got it? This is the last time I'm ever helping you."
He's nodding frantically at the instructions, turning to see the now bloodied dance floor.
The royals have gathered into the corners of the room now as Medusa's gang- the Cinder assassins- attack against Eibon's best guards.
He doesn't know where Medusa has gone. She's been replaced as Wes, Kid, Blackstar and Maka crowd around him frantically.
"Let's go, let's go!"
Soul lets himself be led out of the ballroom by unfamiliar hands.
He's too panicked to focus on anything- everything was too much- he couldn't deal with it-
The second they're in the hallway, he wonders if he entered the apocalypse.
Bodies litter the floor- not a single one of them being an Eibon guard. Broken bodies of Cinder's assassins lay in piles on top of each other, and the sight alone left him dry heaving. Necks, bent out of shapes- arms bent at angles they shouldn't have been bent at- swords pressed through flesh and bone- blood staining the once beautiful carpets of the castle hallways-
He's hurling.
Someone's rubbing a hand between his shoulder blades soothingly, and then suddenly he's back to standing and running.
"Where are we going?" Wes's familiar voice calls out. "We can take him from here, we have a carriage waiting-"
"He can't leave with you guys unarmed," Blackstar answers frantically and loudly, "his sword and armor are still at the guards quarters, just down the way out of the castle."
"Wes, we can't just leave this kingdom to fight against ours! We're to blame for them coming here, we have to do something," Kid urges urgently.
In front of him, Wes and Kid are running, Blackstar leading them through the hallways of the castle frantically, his sword unsheathed in one hand, the other holding onto Ragnarok.
Beside him- a hand clutches his left hand like a lifeline- they're shaking, their fingers squeezing bruising around his knuckles-
He wonders how Maka can even touch him right now.
The longer they follow after Blackstar, the more Soul gathers his bearings as the situation finally settles in his mind.
His left hand is clenching his chest, right where Medusa had cut him. The contact stings and he can tell now he's bled through his shirt, but he doesn't care, especially not when they make it out the castle doors and they're running against the familiar gravel grounds of the kingdom he'd called home for four years.
"Tell me you guys have more weapons stored wherever we're going?" Wes questions.
"Plenty!"
When they make it to the guard's quarters finally, Blackstar slams the door open to the empty house, pulling each of them in frantically before he slams the door and locks it.
Before he can stop himself, he's slumping against the wall of the main room- shaking as he takes Maka down with him.
"Hey- hey," maka calls cautiously, a hand grabbing at his cheek, forcing him to look at the frantic Princess, "Breath, we're all okay- we're okay-"
When he blinks down at the blonde, he notices that her once beautiful clothes were stained with dark blood.
He finds himself stumbling over his words as he sits up, grabbing for the Princess's shoulder frantically.
"Hurt- you're hurt,"
"No, no, no," maka reassures him, "It's your blood. I'm okay, I'm fine."
Maka's thumb brushes across his cheek in circles, soothing his worries just a bit. He finds himself breathing a little easier as his head meets the wall.
"Bandages," Blackstar mutters, walking further into the guards quarters, "We've got to patch him up and then we configure out what to do."
"We?" Soul parrots, looking up from the floor.
Beside him, Wes, Ragnarok, and Kid stood, looking down at him with wide eyes as Blackstar rumbled through the medic room.
"There's no we- you patch me up and we'll figure something out. You need to stay here with Maka."
A hand retreats from his cheek.
"You think I'm just going to let you deal with this alone?"
"I'm not alone," Soul argues, turning back to the blonde, "Wes and kid are here, you on the other hand have other things to worry about- like your parents-"
"Liz and Patty would never let anything happen to them," Maka counters, gripping his hand harshly, "I'm not going to just watch you slip from my fingertips."
"This was always inevitable," Soul finds himself saying, "I would have had to leave eventually."
Maka's wide and teary eyes blink at him owlishly, and suddenly, Soul wishes Medusa hadn't missed his neck in all the commotion.
