#five confirmed deaths has me pressed af

[whatthehickheck]

st4 vol2 solidarity

[redphlox]

Dark Hymns

Sin Reaper Maka Albarn takes on an assignment to assassinate the prophesied Last Weapon - only to fall for his younger brother. SoulxMaka. One sided WesxMaka. Warnings: canon typical violence/blood/gore, poisoning, death Please accept this unexpected and late stand-in for @fabiolangela and @feather97 ‘s amazing af reverbs, which you can find [here] and [here] respectively! They’ve been beyond understanding and are great to work with! Shout out to @jaded-envy and @thefishywitchy and @professor-maka for the 1am brainstorming sessions and beta-ing and support!

read below, or on ffn and ao3!

Soul beckons from behind the drapes for her to follow him onto the balcony, where he tests her defenses by asking her to meet him later tonight.

Maka feels faint with muted longing but declines.

“We can run away together,” he insists with a desperation that mirrors her own. Promises to take her hand and not leave a note for his family almost win her over, especially when he says they could be great together. Confessions that he wants to be there when she’s sad and sleep pressed up next to her in the dark when she’s sick leave her weak-kneed.

“Uhm - we, we could be lonely together,” Soul finishes.

Maka trembles with temptation, but she doesn’t break.

“What you feel for me is criminal,” she finally responds, not unkindly. Eyes chase after her as she crosses the lively ball room and sneaks up beside a chatty Wes, slipping her fingers between his gloved ones. Pretending the brown in his eyes is too light and therefore inherently wrong compared to Soul’s is half-hell, half-betrayal. And when the elder Evans brother pauses to beam at her, she yet again fails to force any feelings for him.

Minutes later, she dares to glance over her shoulder and can’t help but surrender to the sting of Soul’s absence. He isn’t lurking nearby, beckoning her to come back, but she’s still trying to resist him.

X

Outside, the moon is faceless, full, and overly bright against the black night, never moving regardless of the time. Perpetual dusk reigns since Lord Death cast his Omen - the sky hemorrhages somber blues instead of oranges and pinks now that the sun has been lost, and clouds that remind Maka of looking through foggy glass occasionally deprive her of even that small joy.

Either way, it’s all a sign of impending unforgivable sin, and the world buzzes with quiet tension and unrest.

So do the people.

The aristocrats have convened in the Evans mansion despite the rumors surrounding Wes and his younger brother. Maybe these people are here to prove the whispers about one of the heir's arms morphing into a scythe true. Tracing the prominent family’s lineage back to a known Weapon does nothing but galvanize more speculation and scrutiny. Though that demon gene had been stifled centuries ago, what with Sin Reaping, mass hysteria, Witch efforts, and rampant persecutions claiming many of those carriers, no one in this ball room can forget the prophecy of the Last Weapon awakening and plunging society into pandemonium.

The timing between the change in the sky and the hushed scandal can’t be a coincidence.

When the sun never rose a few months ago, Maka’s mama had clutched Maka’s shoulders with purpose as they peered out the window. “This is a sign of your first test. Your first assignment,” she had sighed, proud.

X

“That’s my favorite book.”

“Ohh! I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who’s read The Dark Side of the Moon too!”

“I’ve read it nine times actually, but it seems like my tenth read through will have to be with you, since you’re checking a copy out, too. I’m Wes, by the way.”

Scheming to ingratiate herself with the musical prodigy had been unnecessary because he had materialized next to Maka in the library first, the pair cut away from the world by aisles of overcrowded shelves, reciting passages of the book in question aloud to each other. Up this close to him, Maka had understood why people held him in high regard - he had glowed when he talked, but later on Maka would realize that was because of her, and she had made a mistake.

But Maka had been blind then, but it seemed that Wes had seen something in her soul instead.

X

Sin is everywhere, and even Maka isn’t free of it.

Her mama had always said their duty in life is to save others by cleansing impure souls, Kishins, and reincarnate them to do good in the next life, to uphold peace and Heaven on Earth. But every time Wes tries to kiss Maka and she turns her cheek, pretending her head aches or smiling apologetically, she's lying. Her tally marks for lies have added up to an immoral amount. As a Reaper in training, she can’t afford to be weighed down by such trivialities, but she also can’t take a life without being absolutely sure.

“I can’t see his soul,” Maka had wailed to her mama after her first date with Wes - a well-intended but misguided plan that was borne from self-doubt and crippling empathy for human life. Three years her elder and the son of a wealthy baron, Wes lacks the arrogance most in his position wouldn’t be ashamed of flaunting. “I don’t want to eat his soul if he’s not actually a Weapon, Mama. You told me the gene could only be present in one family generation at a time - what if I picked the wrong brother?”

“He’s the one, I know he is. He’s the talented one, the promising one… but you can still take both. They’ll be reincarnated for the greater good,” her mama had reassured as she abandoned her crochet to hug her only daughter, paralyzed at the living room entrance. “It’ll be a loss for their parents, but a triumph all around.”

Fear of failure had tears welling in Maka’s eyes. “But you said sins count triple for us, and I don’t want to become corrupt… Taking an innocent person’s soul would make me a horrible Reaper.”

Still, Maka hadn’t been comforted by if’s and strategic planning. At this point she hadn’t met Soul Evans yet, who is only five months older than her and ten inches taller, but she had felt Wes’s soul and all of his charismatic, innate wholesomeness and wasn’t convinced it could rot away into wickedness. “Death, why can’t I See his soul?”

“The Lord is silent, Maka, and speaks through Omens. It’s just us now.”

X

Soul Evans is a loner. Always has been, always will be. The only exception is Maka, and being with him hits her with an emotion she can never describe. It’s like the deep ache in her chest when she hears something beautiful and stirring, something ephemeral she wants to hold onto. And it doesn’t stem from hatred, grief, or sadness, though it does make her want to cry. The feeling is just so deep it brings her to her knees tonight when they run into each other again, because Fate has decreed they can’t stay apart.

“Maka, I have something to tell you-”

“No,” she wheezes, squeezing her eyes shut to block him out. Bringing her hands up to her ears doesn’t drown him out either, but part of that is subconscious. Of course she doesn’t want to stop listening. She shouldn’t have stumbled back onto the balcony where they first met, but she missed Soul and Wes’s arms around her waist singed, and the combination of the two was unbearable.

“I think you deserve to be happy,” Soul goes on, the sound of his voice punctuated by scuffling. She peeks between her fingers to confirm he’s scrapping the sole of his polished dress shoes against the floor absentmindedly, hands in his pockets. “Wes is great, and I know everyone loves him better than me. What’s there not to love? He’s smart, he can play any instrument, and he reads fast and always knows what to say. But if you don’t love him, you should tell him. For you.”

Selfless, that’s what Soul is. What happened an hour earlier was only a lapse of judgment brought on by prolonged sorrow and a hint of madness. This is the Soul she knows, watching out for everyone except himself, reasoning himself into emotionless boredom.

“Anyway, I’m - I’m not staying. I can’t.”

The harshness of the cement floor will rip her gown if she doesn’t stand upright soon, she thinks logically. It would be a waste of material. Leaving would be best, but she’s not ready to desert him just yet.

“I thought I’d at least ask if you wanted to come with me… So I wouldn’t have any regrets.”

“Go where?” she hears herself say, her mouth dry.

“Away.”

“Why? Don't…” She gulps. It hurts, but she’s not quite sure where. Her hands, her skin, her lungs? Wherever it is, it radiates. “Don’t leave me…”

Then there’s another sound she can’t place but recognizes vaguely because her ancestors awaken within her, her blood pounding. The dissonance is like skin tearing as easily as paper, like metal contorting in a split second of contained violence, like friction between the atoms in the air.

Like unsheathing a sword.

When Maka looks up, Soul’s right arm is sharp steel, a sleek scythe that reflects the moonshine.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asks, fearing himself, but Maka thanks Heaven on Earth for earning his trust.

X

“I’m going to die,” Soul says, but he doesn’t know Maka is the one assigned to put him six feet under, doesn’t know she still has her secrets to keep. “And if I don’t, Wes will. I’ve heard what they’ve said. They think he’s The Last Weapon.”

Maka already misses Soul, but if it’s because she can already taste his soul or if it’s because he’s running away, she isn’t certain.

“The prophecy says The Last Weapon will wreak Hell on Earth again, but I figured it would be okay if I turned that hatred inward…” He slumps against the balcony’s balustrade, visibly wishing it didn’t exist and that he would fall two stories down into his mother’s rose bushes. “But it’s too much to hold back sometimes. I didn’t mean to lose control of my emotions at the Gala. I was pissed off at Wes and we started arguing and then my arm turned into - into that, and Wes covered it up as much as he could, but now he’s in trouble.”

This is the moment Maka comes to terms as to why she registers turbulence coming from Soul’s soul. Denial could only shield her for so long.

“And I’m - I’m afraid of the Sin Reaper. I know it’s coming for me,” he whispers, looking like he’s a second away from collapsing.

Maka wants to say she is looking for him, but it originally wasn’t for that.

There goes Maka’s daydreams about seeing Soul in the sunlight.

X

Wes finds them minutes later, poking his head unexpectedly through the drapes that separate the balcony from the ballroom, an easygoing smirk on his handsome face as he tells them to present themselves to the Witch Monarch Medusa. Though Maka and Soul are on opposite ends of the small space, Maka can’t help but feel like she’s been caught red-handed.

Never did she think she’d be her unfaithful father’s daughter as she accepts Wes’s hand but wishes it were Soul’s. He needs it more, needs her more.

Yes, Wes is charming, but he doesn’t mean the same thing to Maka.

She has sinned again.

X

As an aside: Wes catches Maka with his younger brother all the time. The two drift together naturally, starting from the day Maka followed the sound of Soul's humming instead of finding Wes in his practice room the first time she went over to the Evans mansion. There are parts of Soul she doesn’t understand yet but could, if she could touch him. She’s burning for contact, impatient to close some sort of space between them that should stay open.

Soul is like the sleeping winter, and she wants to wake him up because he could be great. He’s not just the talentless brother, the other one. During all the moments they’ve shared on the balcony or in one of the many rooms of the mansion while Maka waited for Wes, he’s hummed, sang, or played the piano, and though that’s not all there is to Soul Evans, it proves he's here and alive, alive and brave.

X

Witch Medusa has only one Eye, and though it’s glassy and missing its iris, it Sees everything and Beyond.

Except Maka.

“-My girlfriend,” Wes is saying, arm around her shoulder, glowing.

The Witch Monarch isn’t impressed. “Where?”

Wes gently urges Maka forward until she’s almost brushed up against the Witch’s robes. “It’s a pleasure, your Majesty,” she says, bowing her head automatically, too numb from the encounter with Soul earlier to let her nerves get the best of her.

Mouth hardening into a suspicious line, Witch Medusa gives off a hmm that rings in Maka’s ears like a warning and gives her the eerie impression that ghost snakes are wrapping themselves around her legs. Wes’s hands run cold and unnaturally empty, his soul wavelength on pause, and in her periphery, Soul solidifies into a statue made out of flesh, long lashes frozen mid-blink. Even her lungs stop working, all of her muscles paralyzed but her brain exposed like roadkill guts and flooding with white noise -

The Eye rolls in its socket like a marble until a yellow iris stares into Maka with the force of an impaling blade.

“I know it’s you,” Witch Medusa says without her mouth opening, though an electric, flickering tongue darts out between her lips. “You, the Blind Spot in my Vision, the Sin Reaper. Kill the Last Weapon. Kill him.”

You do it yourself, Maka scream-thinks, boiling and transiently wondering if she can feel the heat of Soul’s skin through his tuxedo if she touched him in his current state. The possibility is something worth fighting for.

“Kill him! Then kill him again!” Medusa’s cackles echo through every fond memory Maka has - reading a book with her mama and papa, Wes’s genuine interest in her favorite books, Soul and his dark hymns.

Kill the witch, is what Maka’s ancestors murmur to only her, just from the Other Side, from within her bones. Kill the witch.

X

The ballroom now barren, Maka beckons Soul over while Wes and his parents bid the last departing guests a good night at the front doors. Soul dips in close to her, strands of his hair feathering her forehead. Barely.

“Stay,” she begs, but with how readily he agrees, some would call it a command.

He gifts her a rare dimpled smile. “Okay, for you.”

They stay like that, leaning into each other, basking in their binding secret, and when Wes saunters back and focuses on Maka’s smile, so unlike the polite one she wears for him, he’s the one marred by a deep-seated frown.

X

“Do you ever Hear things, Mama?”

Nothing is as soothing as her mama running her fingers through Maka’s hair before bedtime, gentle nails massaging her scalp. Alternating between that and the hairbrush lulls Maka into hesitant sleepiness - she’s not sure if she has unwelcomed company, not sure if the Witch Medusa still has access to her brain, but she’s losing the battle to keep her eyelids open.

“Sin Reapers don’t Hear things, honey, they See,” Mama replies, shifting slightly and refusing Maka’s apologies - is she jabbing her? At her age, Maka might be too old to cuddle and share a bed with her mama, but she doesn’t know if she can sleep alone after - after the ball. Even if Wes escorted her home, she hadn’t felt safe until she jumped into her mama’s arms.

“But Mama, don’t you… just know things without knowing?”

“Ah! That’s Intuition. Listen to your gut, Maka.”

“I don’t know what mine is saying.” Blowing air out of her mouth and aiming it at her bangs to remove them from her face, she crosses her arms, sagging into her mama. “Did you See anything in Wes when he dropped me off?”

“Not particularly, not with our Sight. But he’s cute, and it’s clear that he sees everything in you.”

“That’s exactly what I didn’t want,” she groans, deciding to keep Soul’s secret. “I just wanted to make sure he was the Last Weapon. I feel horrible. I didn’t mean to let it go this far. I should have stopped at the one date, but…" But then I met Soul, and now I don’t know how to break up with Wes or save either of them.

Fingers kneading small circles into Maka’s temples, her mama says, "Sometimes there’s no room to have pity… it’ll make it harder for you to cleanse his soul.”

Cleanse his soul!

Suddenly, Maka can’t sleep, like she’s been awakened from a thousand year slumber. Her mind is an inferno of ideas.

After all, a Reaper should have a Scythe.

X

Climbing up the viney Evans mansion walls and into Soul’s window violates at least three laws, but the thrill of it is intoxicating enough to balance out any regrets or legal consequences that might come up later. Reckless is what this should be labeled - she has no clue what she’ll rely on if this doesn’t work, but the sight of Soul so still and vulnerable in his bed, burrowed beneath his comforter, is incomparable and priceless.

Walking softly over to his bedside, she covers his mouth, her palm burning instantaneously. Contact, at last. “Hey, Soul? Soul? … It’s me.”

His brows furrow and he sighs, but he doesn’t open his eyes. Careful and slow, Maka sits on the bed, the mattress dipping and creaking, splaying her hands on either side of him, stalling - can she do this, can she save him? She hovers over him, long hair falling around her face like a curtain and tickling him. Soul doesn’t wake with a scream but with a laugh.

He blinks into the stark darkness that has seeped into his room along with her, confused, dazed, like he’s seeing a dream, until his jaw drops open. “Maka?”

“Hi,” she says, deciding that she could stay in this neverending night with him.

X

“Can you control it?”

“Can I,” he repeats, grin wide and brazen and making her giddy. He points a finger at her before steeling it - it’s like watching metal melt but backwards, skin hardening and tinting gunmetal gray. “I can make it look like I got a sick manicure and pedicure too, and I can even make my arm hairs prickly.”

“Such finesse,” she muses, distracted by the thought of touching him again.

Two of his fingers morph into a blade, each one half of a pair of scissors. Snip snip. “And I can give you a haircut if you ever need it.”

Distantly, Maka knows she’ll look back on this moment and wish it never ended, and she’s so lost in the thought she forgets to respond.

Now crestfallen, Soul lowers his scissor hand, hiding it beneath the comforter but never breaking their eye contact. “That day, with Wes… that… I don’t know what happened. I was mad, and it just happened. I was trying to slam my fist into the piano and before I knew it, my hand was slicing through it.”

“You must have been so afraid,” she says, reaching out to brush his bangs back and appreciating that he’s nothing like her - honest, cautious, strong. Decisive.

“Something like that…” It comes out in a broken whisper, because Maka’s hand has wandered from his messy bed hair to his cheek, and she can sense that he’s holding something back that is too overwhelming to be contained for much longer. It’s similar to the feeling she gets in her chest, except he’s been under pressure for so long it might crack his ribs.

“I have something to tell you,” she admits, his jaw clenching underneath the heel of her palm. The effect she has on him is both empowering and humbling.

X

A Sin Reaper’s life consists of inherent loneliness and surreptitious burdens.

Living in the shadow between Humanity and the Divine isn’t a condemnation, but a bittersweet privilege. The general public both trembles at the mention of the Sin Reaper but also holds an unyielding reverence toward the cloaked hero-esque figure that safekeeps their Pure world by eating Kishin souls and carrying their sins.

Mama says no one knows what and who they are, not even Papa, who sends postcards from Wherever he is, off on his covert mission. And though Instinct tells Maka that revealing their family’s legacy as Reapers would incite Hell on Earth - a swarm of murderous Kishins her way, panic, dishonor, and apocalyptic chaos - she also can't harm the Last Weapon.

It has to be this way.

X

After her reveal, Soul holds her hands for the first time - grips them, gaze aflame.

“We can still run away,” he offers, grin crooked and dangerous.

“No,” she shakes her head, though she yearns to write a goodbye letter to her mama and leave with him. “So you’re - you're not afraid of me?”

“Didn’t know Reapers could be so cool.”

“You should smile like that more,” she says, realizing she hasn’t felt this happy in a while. “Soul, I have to tell you something - I… I want to wield you. Is that okay? We could be great together, just you and me.”

X

“I’ll follow you to the moon and back, Maka.”

X

Truth is Soul opening his soul for Maka to See.

X

“Am I… bad?”

“No,” she comforts, open palm flat against his bare chest, sensing his soul wavelength’s cadence. Sorting through the suppressed affection and longing that have been ticking like bombs inside her doesn’t come easily, and biting back a terrorized howl at the spark-like tendrils briefly poking out from his soul’s core blinds her for a few minutes.

They’re inky black and electric.

Like Medusa’s tongue.

Corrupt.

She can’t bear to tell him that about himself, not when his eyes are glittering in the faint moonshine that finds them planning all their sins.

“Medusa can’t see me. I would laugh and feel better about everything, but I felt like she was going to make me explode from the inside.” The sensation of the snake ghosts slithering and constricting her comes back, giving Maka wild goosebumps. “You don’t remember any of it?”

“I mean, I felt like I had zoned out for a second, but other than that, nothing,” Soul confirms, the crease between his brows deepening. “So… kill the Witch, huh? Treason and mutiny and all that good stuff.”

“Yeah! But since I’ll be in my Reaper form and you’ll be a scythe, no one will know it’s us.”

Though Soul doesn’t ask her to stay until the blue of daybreak, Maka does, and when she throws a leg over his windowsill to climb back down and hurry home, he trails after her, not touching her but looking as if he wants to ask for a hug.

X

Wes invites Maka to the Monarch Witch Medusa’s upcoming dinner, as she and Soul had predicted. Neither envisioned Wes asking Maka right in front of Soul, but no malignant intentions on Wes’s part lurked behind that drawback. A combination of unfortunate timing and Soul increasingly loitering near during Wes and Maka’s dates ever since that night were to blame.

Still, she and Soul can’t look each other in the eye for a week.

X

On that day a month later, Maka dresses up in another homemade gown, this one celestial blue, and falls in step with Soul as she and the Evanses walk through the Monarch’s Castle to the dining room. A small cork-stopped bottle filled with a neon pink liquid hangs from a string tied around her waist, bouncing against her leg whenever she walks, and it beats in time with her anxious heartbeat.

For some strange, silly reason, Maka loves when Soul whispers to her, even if it’s about something terrifying: “How are you going to cleanse me?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Wes casts an inquisitive look over his shoulder at them.

X

Her Majesty Medusa doesn’t don grandiose robes like she did at Wes Evans’s after recital party. Twin braids border her face, her cloak eerily familiar to her Mama’s.

Half an hour in, Soul distracts by spilling his tea over Wes, who accidentally pours his over Medusa. Mr. and Mrs. Evans apologize until they’re blue in the face while Maka empties the small jar into Medusa’s cup, never leaving her own unattended, but Maka can’t ignore the life threatening pangs and revolting nausea that soon have her doubled over, head smacking the table.

“Is there a problem?” Medusa asks in a tone that reveals she knows exactly the problem, Maka doubting that anyone else in the room can See Medusa’s snake-like tongue bolting out between her fangy teeth.

“None,” Maka strives to say, but the articulation is questionable - it’s like her mouth is full of cotton balls. “I… I think I took a sip of some poison,” is the last thing she mumbles as she room whirls around her, as she teeters and the lights go out behind her eyelids before she even hits the lavish, imported carpet.

X

Breaking up with Wes Evans wasn’t part of their plan, but unintentionally poisoning herself wasn't either, and she and Soul hadn’t discussed breaking up with his brother because it was an unspoken given that hadn’t been assigned a deadline.

“We should break up,” she says to his how are you feeling before her eyes can focus on the ceiling tiles.

For once, he’s caught off guard, struggling to repress his emotions and respond coherently and responsibly. That’s Soul’s specialty, not his. Maka doesn’t allow regret to jab at her for more than it should for that comparison, because it’s like her mama said - empathy could kill her. “Oh, I see…”

“I’m sorry.”

“Do you…” Wes brings an unsure hand up to undo his neatly combed hair - a minuscule clue that he’s devastated. “Do you want me to stay?”

She can’t lie. “No. Thank you, though.”

“Sure.” It’s unlike him to lack poise, but she doesn’t pride herself in single-handedly unhinging him. “Should I ask Soul to come keep you company?”

What’s worse than Wes’s immediate resignation, than his deteriorating calm, than the fact that he’s still his kind, understanding, and unquestioning self and probably saw this coming and doesn’t suggest any of that resentfully, is that Maka just can't lie. “Please… Thanks, Wes.”

X

“Maybe you shouldn’t get up so fast-”

“Meet me at midnight, and then we’re going to get payback on that Witch,” Maka seethes between stomach throbs, ripping the unnaturally white and sterile hospital bed sheets off herself despite Soul’s protests.

Only a hand to her shoulder slows her down. “You should rest, first.”

“Okay,” she agrees, but only because his touch is sedating and causes her head to do that whirling thing again.

If she weren’t a Reaper, she might have died. But she is, and she recovers at an alarming rate, but pretends to be ill for a few more days for appearances - and to pass the time with Soul by her bedside.

X

“Kill the Witch!" her ancestors chant in her sleep.

X

Three hundred years ago, Witch Medusa took the throne after Witch Mabaa disappeared, and because Witches are Divine and possess powers no Human has been granted, it’s been an unquestioned ritual that they oversee Heaven on Earth. Should any Evil appear, they are sworn to protect and fight in the name of Lord Death and Goodness.

But Medusa’s soul is different, Maka comes to understand thanks to her ancestors. It shifts forms, it deceives, it’s full of sin, and that’s why the Witch can’t use the Eye properly.

X

Medusa Sees all, and while Maka had anticipated the Witch to foresee tonight’s one team assault, she had miscalculated the sheer lack of mercy and immense influence the Monarch bears.

Maka and Soul are separated by charging Kishin souls, who had waited for them high above and dove at the pair as soon as they strolled past the security guards. Too many feet away, Soul slashes at the Kishins with his blade-arm, his scythe form too heavy for Maka to wield in his current (unknown to him) tainted state. "What are we going to do?”

“I - I don't know,” she cries, her mind sputtering like a failing engine but her ancestors guiding her through draining the Kishin of their Souls with only a thought, with only pointing.

Fear pales Soul for a moment - afraid of her - but he shakes his head and rededicates himself. “I trust you, no matter what!”

“Then - come closer,” Maka says without thinking, never having been so assertive before, but still asking if it’s okay to kiss him anyway. He moves toward her, nodding yes, please all the way, the few strides he takes feeling like an eternity. “And if this doesn’t work and you get reincarnated, promise you’ll come back to me!”

“Always, Maka.”

By then he’s reached her, and she receives him with a warm, relieved tremble and a sigh as his hands rest on her shoulders, standing on her tiptoes to hook an arm around his neck and pull him down to meet her halfway. Neither of them is hesitant, spurred on by desperation - eager to feel the other’s lips, to fit together and lessen the space between their souls until it disappears, to live through the night.

There’s something at work while they search for a rhythm, like his vibrating soulspace is caught in an invisible battle between Good and Evil, and she vows to submerge the place with her own soul’s Purity. A Purge, a Detox. Nails digging into his skin, she parts her lips ever so slightly, and when he follows suit, she tentatively presses her tongue against his, squeezing her eyes shut and focusing, focusing, focusing on that impurity deep in his core, flooding it until the flinching tendrils disintegrate.

Maka breaks away, gasping for air for like she’s come up from being underwater too long, holding on to him in case something’s gone horribly awry.

“Looks like we’re going to get a Corrupt Witch’s soul,” he says in her head. “Ready, Partner?”

Maka has no words - she plants a kiss on his blade in agreement, turning to run on.

X

Snakes sprout up from the tiled floors in the castle’s foyer, this time tangible, this time digging their fangs into her shins and calves, one attaching itself to her wielding arm. Soul drives himself through all of their necks before she realizes what’s happened, malleable in her hands with a mind of his own.

As a Reaper, she walks softly, half-there and half-here, so she doesn’t bleed, but she isn’t sure what other damage they might have done. She’s real enough to be blown through a castle wall, to lose consciousness until the jarring sound of metal scraping retrieves her to the world.

“Soul?”

“Maka!”

He’s so close, yet so far.

X

“Don’t ever drop me again,” Soul says lightheartedly after she stumbles through the rubble to him, wiggling his brows, the left one smeared with blood from a perfect gash on his forehead. “Wield me?”

X

Medusa can’t See Maka, but she can sense Soul’s soul, and it’s detrimental to their offense.

“I’m so sorry,” Soul repeats, but he’s the one with the bleeding scythe Eye, the one taking all the hits.

X

Maka can’t keep promises. There’s too much noise, and she can’t hear her ancestors over their own jumbled screaming, can’t hear the chandelier snapping and falling on her. She doesn’t remember letting him go.

X

She emerges from the debris unscathed, but defeated.

“Join me, Deathscythe, and become my Last Weapon.”

Like all heartbreaks, this one is unexpected and poignant, but Maka quietly accepts that she deserves it - after all, she had done the same thing to Wes, leaving him after leading him on.

“Deathscythe,” Soul murmurs, now in his human form, the interest in his voice already a pledge of disloyalty. Each step he takes away from Maka reminds her of Wes exiting her hospital room after the poisoning. Maybe this is punishment for her sins - Lord Death does have a funny sense of humor like that, and this unreal level of irony would be a trademark of his tricks.

“Soul, no,” Maka begs, hating how her voice cracks under the strain of holding back a surge of rage and hurt.

When Soul turns to give her a once over, indifferent and derisive and cold, he rolls his eyes, one of them highlighted with a streak of blood, echoing her: “Your feelings for me are criminal.”

Witch Medusa gleams with sardonic glee as Soul swathes an arm around her shoulders, Maka following him against her better judgment - or maybe because she trusts him, because she Listens to her Intuition and can See his soul.

“Soul, how could you? You can’t just leave me like this, we’re partners, you said you’d be there with me. You said you wanted to run away, just me and you.” She sniffles, and it all comes crashing down - her face crumbles, but she doesn’t bother to wipe the tears away. “We could have been great together…”

Later, Maka’s ankle will swell up from rolling it during the effort to reach him before Medusa notices Soul double crossed her, but the exhilaration of realizing he’s still on her side and the thrill of feeling him transform in her palm, of their souls lacing together for their first kill masks it until hours later -

When the sun returns.

X

“Huh. The sunlight makes your hair look… like a field of wheat.”

Maka scrunches her nose but blushes. “That's… cheesy. You okay, Soul?”

“Definitely,” he reassures after a quick kiss to her forehead.

X

Five years later to the date, Maka admires the new ring on her finger as she walks arm-in-arm with Soul, not knowing that today is the last day the sun will rise. It’ll set and the blue daylight will wash over the world in the morning, the moon stuck in one position yet again, Lord Death permanently silent but still Watching.

“You and Wes never happened,” Soul keeps joking, but Maka knows part of it stems from residual insecurities not related to her but to the amount of time Wes’s one-sided feeling endured after the breakup - sixteen months, not a day less or more, to her anguish.

“But you're Wes,” she teases anyway, hoping it’ll earn her snark and a dimpled appreciative beam. “My favorite Evans.”

Maka opens her mouth to comment about the similarity between the two, but like that day, just like before, the air particles seem to slow down until they stop. This time it's Soul who turns perversely static and hollow, like his soul’s been carved out abruptly. Even the wind is cut off, Soul’s hair as still as a picture, the amber leaf behind him suspended midair. Panic stricken, Maka clutches Soul closer, scrutinizing her surroundings wildly -

Across a street, a girl who bears a chilling resemblance to Medusa, down to the twin braids framing her face and intertwined together at her chin, waves at Maka, little fingers wiggling.

And if this doesn’t work and you get reincarnated, promise you’ll come back to me!

The disembodied voice makes Maka’s blood curdle, her ancestors screeching. That plea was only supposed to be for Soul, but it seems Maka’s suspicions about having company in her brain had been right all along.

The little girl stares and doesn’t say anything, but her eyes bug out as she sneers, black tongue rattling and crackling.

It’s clear that she remembers.