Chapter One

Intro

"Sanctuary?" Lord Death asked, peering at the skeletal girl though his mask. Next to him, Spirit looked at her suspiciously, arms folded. "Now why do you want sanctuary here?"

To her credit, the redhead didn't wince at the inquisitive, yet almost accusatory words. The only noticeable reaction she had, in fact, was for her fingers to twitch slightly before she said in a perfectly calm, level tone of voice, "Well, I am a weapon. Why shouldn't I be able to ask for sanctuary?"

"That's avoiding the question," Lord Death pointed out, the mild rebuke clear. Instead of replying, her hands clenched into tight fists by her sides and she inclined her head moments later, sending a cascade of red hair over her right shoulder. After a moment, she raised her head. Pale blue eyes stared at Lord Death defiantly; though she was obviously apologetic for her lack of information, it was clear she had no desire to explain anything further to the grim reaper.

After a long pause, during which he considered the situation carefully, Lord Death finally sighed. "Well, miss…"

"Amy," she supplied.

"Amy. Well, Amy, I suppose I could allow you sanctuary here," he paused for both emphasis and dramatic effect, while ignoring Spirit's shocked stare, "under one condition."

As he spoke, he raised one giant white finger to accent his words. The hope that had sparked in Amy's eyes as he had begun his sentence faded into suspicion and she eyed him warily. "What sort of condition?"

"If you want to stay here, you'll have to attend classes." The effect of those words on Amy was one that Lord Death found highly amusing. One would think that she would have realized that in order to stay at an academy she would have to take classes, but apparently not, for Amy's jaw dropped and her posture sagged slightly in shock. It was a big change considering the poker-stiff posture she had adopted the entire time while in the Death Room. Lord Death chuckled at the look on her face, pleased that he'd been able to rattle her. "Oh, come now. This is an academy, after all."

"Yes, but –"

"You heard Lord Death," Spirit interrupted, regaining the ability of speech that had temporarily been robbed by his meister's decision. "If you're going to stay, you're taking classes, and there won't be any ifs, ands, or buts about it or you can leave."

"Now, now, Spirit," Lord Death admonished. "Give her some time to think it over."

The death scythe rolled his eyes, but complied and fell silent. There was a pause, during which Amy somehow managed to compose herself, though not without visible difficulty. Finally, she broke the quiet by saying, "If I take classes here, would I still be able to leave whenever I want?"

Lord Death hesitated for a fraction of a second before nodding. There was no point in denying the girl that much, especially when it was clear that she didn't plan on spending that long here. He wouldn't intentionally drive her away – not yet, anyways. If things changed, however, he might have to. "You have my word as a grim reaper," he told her in a rare moment of solemnity.

"…All right," Amy finally agreed. "I'll go to the classes."

"Wonderful! Spirit, please show her to her room now."

"…Do I have to?"

"Don't make me Reaper Chop you," Lord Death threatened. Confusion flashed across Amy's face at the odd term, but Spirit just groaned (loudly), and started down the long corridor that connected the Death Room with the DWMA. After a moment, Amy turned and followed him, but before she got to the first archway, she turned. "Thanks."

"Come on, hurry up," Spirit grumbled.

"I'm coming!"

SyMmEtRy

Amy followed Spirit down the halls of the DWMA, their footsteps echoing in the eerie silence of the near-empty school. She was led through a series of corridors and down several flights of stairs, until they were in what she assumed was the basement, though it looked more like a medieval dungeon, what with the stone walls, torches, and general dark atmosphere. The redhead shivered. It wasn't the scariest place she'd ever been to, but it was certainly spooky.

"Here," Spirit finally said, breaking the mutual agreement of complete silence to open a door and step back. "This is where you'll stay for however long you're here."

She poked her head inside the room. The walls, floor, and ceiling all consisted of the same dreary grey stone that the hall was constructed of. A bed was pushed into one corner and a small desk in the other, complete with a wheeled chair. There was a skull rug on the floor, and a dresser pushed up against the wall, next to the bed. "Very Halloween-esque," Amy commented as she stepped into the room.

She could almost hear Spirit rolling his eyes. "Well, it's true," she defended, turning to look at the death scythe, folding her arms across her chest. "The only thing it's missing is torture devices."

"Those can be provided," Spirit muttered. "I'll take you to your class in the morning," he said in a slightly louder voice. "Be ready."

And with that, the death scythe left, closing the door as he departed. "At least they let me stay." Amy sighed and let herself fall down onto the bed. She kicked off her chunky black boots and took her long red hair out of its ponytail, allowing it to pool around her on the ugly, checkered comforter. The scrunchie went around her wrist; the bobby pin glued to a fake silk sunflower was carefully placed on the small bedside table. "Even if it's not in the most comforting of rooms..."

SyMmEtRy

"Lord Death, we need to talk," Spirit said grimly as he let himself back into the Death Room.

"You're worried about that girl, aren't you?" Lord Death guessed. Spirit frowned.

"Worried about what she could be, yeah," he replied. "Doesn't it seem strange to you that she refused to answer any of your questions clearly?"

"Well," the reaper corrected gently, raising one large foam finger in contradiction, "she did tell us her name."

"And that makes her trustworthy?" Spirit shot back. "Medusa told us her name, and look what happened there. Besides that, the witch had a good cover story. Amy refused to tell us anything."

"Which makes it more likely that she isn't a spy and truly does want sanctuary," Lord Death replied. "Besides, something about that girl troubles me."

"What, besides the fact that she could be a spy?"

"You're so suspicious, Spirit," the grim reaper scolded. "I was talking about her soul. How old would you say she is?"

Spirit resisted a sigh. Answering questions that he knew Lord Death already knew the answer to made him feel as if he were in class.

"Seventeen, same age as Maka, but I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"Now, really, I thought you'd know better than to say something like that." Lord Death sighed and put one hand to what appeared to be his chin in thought. "She has a remarkably powerful soul for someone so young, especially considering that she's never been to the academy before. That bears looking into. If she really is connected to the rumors, well, then we'll just find out how and why." Lord Death paused for a moment, before continuing in a much cheerier tone, "On top of that, she looks like a walking, talking skeleton, so it's only right for us to take her in and feed her."

"You make it sound like she's a lost puppy," Spirit muttered.

"And?"

He sighed. Sometimes he thought it would be better to ask for a reassignment, if only to save his slowly degrading sanity, but then he would remember that his precious Maka was still at the academy. Still, dealing with Lord Death was both frustrating and intriguing, considering that even after all these years of being his personal weapon Spirit had yet to really understand how the grim reaper's thought processes worked. "I really hope we don't regret this," he muttered.

Lord Death nodded grimly. "So do I."

SyMmEtRy

Morning came, and with it, a desperate desire to take a shower. Long before Spirit arrived at her door to show her to her first class of the day, Amy was up, sitting on her bed and picking at the hem of her green tank top. "Classes," she muttered to herself. "I still can't believe I got roped into taking classes…"

"Hey, Amy, you up?" Spirit's unenthusiastic greeting floated through the door, accompanied by a lazy knock. By way of answer, Amy stood, crossed the room, and opened the door to see the taller redhead standing directly in front of the doorway. She spread her arms wide in a 'what-you-see-is-what-you-get' fashion before letting them fall to her side, prompting an eye roll from the older weapon.

"Come on, then," Spirit ordered, not even waiting to see if Amy would follow before he left. She retied her denim jacket around her skinny waist as she followed Spirit, shutting the door behind her. As she walked the headphones that had been hung around her neck swiveled so that they nearly perfectly positioned to fall off with just the slightest of movements. Absently, concentrating on trying to remember how many left turns Spirit had led her down, Amy reached up and fixed the headphones.

"Hey, Stein!" Spirit called as he pushed open a door and stepped inside. Amy followed cautiously, barely managing to slip past the rapidly shutting door. Once inside, she looked around to see exactly where they were, and was unable to keep her eyes from going wide in surprise.

When Lord Death had told her that she was going to take classes, she had assumed, for some silly reason, that the classrooms and the amount of people in them would be small. Such was not the case. The large, circular room held at least fifty people, not including the teacher, who wore a stitched lab coat and had what looked like a giant bolt in his head. He sat on his chair backwards, and spun around in it when the two weapons walked in.

"So, is this the new one?" Stein asked, peering at the two of them curiously. Spirit nodded. "Interesting indeed. But I can't help but wonder as to why you waited until the middle of class to bring her here," the professor added.

"Ha!" Before Amy had the chance to move, a boy around her age jumped out of his chair and landed in front of her is what was clearly a fighting stance. She took a step back, nearly backing into Spirit, who had moved to the door. "How dare you try to steal my spotlight?"

"What?" was her eloquent and very confused reply.

The blue haired boy snorted. "Well, since you're new around here, I guess I can give you one more chance. The name's Black*Star, and I'm the man who's going to surpass god!"

Well, that certainly cleared things up. Amy stared at him and slowly shook her head. "You're insane."

"Take that back!" Black*Star shouted. "Unless you wanna fight? 'Cause I'm telling you, there's no way a weakling like you would ever be able to beat a big star like me."

"Black*Star, please stop yelling at the new student, even if she is asymmetrical." Though Amy wanted to look around to find out just who had spoken, Black*Star's shout of, "Don't interrupt, Kid! This is important!" made her raise her hands in utter confusion as she aimed a disbelieving stare at the tattooed boy.

"Black*Star, get back to your seat," Professor Stein drawled, evidently deciding that enough mayhem had transpired in his classroom and that it was time to stop. "Amy, just sit next to Death the Kid. He'll be showing you around the school today."

Amy furrowed her brow in confusion at the sound of the unfamiliar name. "Who?"

"He's got OCD," was Professor Stein's unhelpful reply. Someone snorted and muttered something about understatements to her right; Amy herself crossed her arms in front of her chest and scowled. At her look, the professor gave a creepy smile and a short laugh. "Right, unhelpful. I tend to be that way a lot, or so my students tell me. He's the one wearing the suit."

Armed with this new, actually helpful information, Amy eyed the students around her, looking for a boy wearing a suit. T-shirt, skirt, hoodie… There. The corner of her eye caught a glimpse of black suit, and Amy pivoted quickly to fixate the boy with a carefully indifferent stare. He ignored her in favor of gazing intently at his desk, though whether that was because he was actually working (not that any of the other kids were) or because he was deliberately doing so was a mystery to her. "That kid?" she asked after a moment, pointing a finger at the boy with black hair, and turning to aim a quick glance at Professor Stein, who gave a cheery, yet creepy, nod.

With a sigh, Amy let her hand drop and made her way up to the empty seat next to the black haired boy – Death the Kid, she reminded herself – and sat down as unobtrusively as was possible, but it still wasn't enough to keep the multitude of eyes from the other pupils from staring at her. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat and turned her gaze to the desk, clenching and unclenching her hands in her lap. Cloth rustled in the seat next to hers, and she felt a new pair of eyes on her, one that she studiously ignored in favor of peering up from the wooden desktop to see Professor Stein rolling back to his desk, still grinning like a maniac.

"All right, kiddies," Professor Stein drawled, tossing a scalpel next to Black*Star's head. "Time for learning."

With good natured grumbles, moans, and distressed mutters, the rest of the students returned to their work, with the exception of Death the Kid, whose eyes she could still feel boring holes into her side. With a quiet huff of frustration, she turned in her seat to face him, and was met with a pair of narrowed golden eyes. After a moment of looking at him blankly, Amy narrowed her eyes in return. "What?" she wanted to know, voice low in a hushed whisper.

"That hairclip," he informed her in a tart, yet equally quiet, tone. "The rest of you is decent enough, I suppose. But the hairclip just ruins it all."

"Excuse me?"

"Your symmetry!" Frustration spilled into his voice and painted pale pink spots on his cheeks. "It's completely off!"

"So says the boy with three white stripes on the left side of his head," Amy snapped back.

The effect of these words was both instantaneous and rather amusing to watch. Death the Kid's face went pale, his pupils dilated until they were nothing more than pinpricks in a sea of gold, and he bit his lip so hard she could see blood. After a few moments, he managed to regain control, and her guide silently turned from her to bow down over his desk as he placed fisted hands onto the surface and study them intently. Amy could see his mouth moving silently, as though he were repeating a mantra to himself.

"Looks like you set him off." The girl directly on Death the Kid's left sighed. "He'll be okay in a few minutes. I'm Liz, by the way."

Amy just looked at her, uncomprehending. She'd just done something – she wasn't sure what – to Death the Kid, and this girl, who was obviously his friend if not more, had just brushed it off like it was nothing and introduced herself. Feeling uncomfortable (for Liz's eyes had been joined by the curious pair belonging to the girl who sat on her left), Amy shifted in her seat and turned her gaze to the opposing wall.

This was definitely going to take some getting used to.

Disclaimer: See Soul Eater? See how shiny and awesome it is? That's because I don't own it.

A/N: Finally. It took waaaaay too long to get this written. Argh. In any case, here is the rewritten version of Dark Sunflower. For those of you who read the old version, expect some pretty major changes. For those of you who saw the summary and went, 'hey, why not?' welcome! Much thanks goes to call-me-Ami for being my wonderful beta and putting up with my minor meltdowns while I was writing this chapter. Remember, readers, reviews feed the authoress's soul.

EDIT: The original last two paragraphs have been removed and rewritten. The result is, I think, much better.