a/n: I'm really very fond of Spirit. I've always wanted to write a Spirit-centric fic, but I couldn't ever grind it out the way I wanted. Set in the manga-verse. Enjoy!

Hearsay

He's not overly fond of returning to the school, but every time he's called in as a substitute lecturer, he lets his pride as a Death Scythe overtake his hesitation. There's only one real reason the redhead might enjoy being here, but, as per usual, that reason is away on a mission.

"Ah, did you hear," a dark-skinned young woman with a beautiful smile turns to a tall white male next to her. "Maka is graduating this year, with honors! I suppose it's no surprise – she's a hero, after all!"

Spirit's smile is way too eager in response. That's right–my daughter, the hero, the star! After a moment, he corrects his grin to a scowl, growling at the pair that's walking past him, a different train of thought crossing his mind. Wait, no. It's good that others recognize how amazing she is…but she doesn't need to be any more popular with boys! His turquoise eyes hone in on the male's hazel ones, and the boy immediately clams up, scurrying away with the girl quickly.

The weapon sighs, desperately on the verge of tears just before he kicks open the classroom door.

It's just a few hours, he tells himself every time he has to do this. It'll all be over in a few hours.

/

It's Tuesday when he sees his daughter in the hallway. Spirit immediately brightens, making a beeline for her, and is cut off by a group of teenagers with bright eyes and even brighter smiles.

"Is it true that you're the best meister at the Academy?"

"Will you sign my shirt?"

"You can't graduate – everyone will miss you too much!"

The girl's father grinds his teeth and curls his fists. Just before he can step in and tell all these brats to clear the way for her – she's a very busy girl, after all – she starts to chat with them happily, and he loses his chance to interact with his daughter.

Her audience grows silent to hear her humble words of wisdom. They clap as she salutes them and scurries in the opposite direction, noting that she has lots of things to accomplish that afternoon. Kid respects her abilities, and sends her on missions often at her own request, since she really is an incomparable workaholic.

Spirit sighs, leaning against the wall and hanging his head. He worries for her. He wants to hold her in his arms and read to her until she falls asleep, but it's no longer his place to do so. It's too late for him to start acting like her father again.

But he always will be, even if she never accepts that.

/

Rumors at the Academy spread like wildfire. The latest news on the lips of the students that he has to silence involves his daughter, who had been assumed to be an interloper of couples in New Jersey on her last mission. In reality, she'd merely killed a pre-kishin soul that had been murdering members of romantic entanglements.

Really, these children need to do their research. Maka's the last person on earth that would want to divide two people in love. During the lecture, he notes (with many grumbles) that Maka had always been an exemplary student, and if they want to even reach her toes, they'll think twice about whispering such rude words about somebody who could dismember all of them without a weapon.

They hush at that and all of the sudden, he has their attention again. Brats.

/

When the final Death Scythe the Academy produced walks into the school by himself on Thursday, Spirit feels like his blood pressure is rising, like he does every time they cross paths.

It's unfortunate that their mediator, his daughter, is absent, and also that the young man is the (involuntarily registered) guest lecturer for his class that afternoon.

"Hey." Soul murmurs his greeting with his usual scowl, and Spirit grinds his teeth to grunt out a hello in response.

Spirit would've appreciated it if the younger weapon hated him, or was intimidated, like his students often were. Anything would have been better than Soul's blank nonchalance, and seeing his lazy, half-lidded, wine-red eyes stare blankly back at him made the man break his plastic fork in abstract frustration.

Squeaks, cries, and giggles followed the tall teen's back as they left the lunch room and headed to the lecture hall. The more compliments he received, the lower his slump became. Pitiful. Spirit wanted to groan and berate the young man, but honestly, he'd hated the glory that came with being a Death Scythe even before being the last one under the treaty's terms had come into the picture. Not to mention, Soul was (supposedly) a rather handsome bachelor, which only added to his allure. Of course, his admirers are entirely unaware that he deeply loathes this attention, and the reason he's being 'cool' and 'aloof' is because he's actually a tremendous introvert that wants to run a hundred miles away from all of their baseless whispers.

Maka's father decides to be the bigger man, for once, and offer his assistance. He barks at the students until they scatter, and frowns at the tan, white-haired youth, expecting gratitude.

Soul simply nods, flippantly opening the door to the room without saying a word, and Spirit wonders if perhaps he shouldn't have done him the favor after all.

/

His phone rings on Friday, and he's never been more grateful that he isn't at the bar when he reads the caller ID.

"Hello?" The redhead scratches at his stubble-covered chin and turns down the volume on the television.

"You're coming to dinner tomorrow." The familiar voice of his fellow weapon courses through the line. Spirit, so unused to his solicitation, nearly chokes on his spit and hangs up the phone, convinced that this is a terrible prank.

Both of them are silent for a while before the older male coughs and tries not to let himself get caught in delusions of happy impossibilities. "You're just messing with me."

Soul, on the other end, snorts. "If you don't want to come, don't. I'm hanging up, old m—"

"Wait, wait, wait!" Spirit perks up and grips the phone like his life depends on it. "You're serious. You're actually inviting me to dinner. Alone? Are you poisoning it? What's the catch?"

"Damn, calm down. There's no catch, you creep. I'm cooking, not Maka, so you can rest assured that you won't die. And of course it's not just gonna be you and me – ugh. All three of us. Dinner. Our apartment. We eat at seven. If you don't show, your loss." With that, the phone clicked silent, and Spirit's jaw fell.

Dinner with his daughter. He hadn't had dinner with his daughter in more than six years now, and even when they'd lived together, he'd been working (and flirting) more than he'd been around to eat with the girl.

Okay, there was the major downfall of Soul's general existence, but after a moment, he decides that he'll excuse that.

Spirit figures the pros (talking to Maka, eating with Maka, smiling with Maka) outweigh the cons (Soul's sarcasm, Soul's food, Soul's blatant disregard for respect of his elders).

/

He wears his usual suit, but forgoes the jacket and tie. It's hot, even at 6:45 in the evening.

The redhead really shouldn't be surprised by the white-haired male's appearance when he opens the door, but he is. Maybe this is why he doesn't visit them more often – he hates the feeling of seeing a boy open his daughter's apartment door like he belongs there. (In actuality, he does. It's his apartment too.)

Soul snorts at his appearance. Spirit shakes a fist in rage and murmurs under his breath, but follows the young man's footsteps until he reaches the kitchen table.

There's a beautiful spread, and Spirit hates Soul just a little more. The older male was no slouch when it came to cooking, but he'd never come this close to a four or five star restaurant in his own kitchen. How unfair was that? Soul was supposed to be this cranky, lazy, sour kid with a questionable past – how'd he get so good at cooking, anyways?

Maka has her hair pulled in a low bun, and she turns slowly to see her weapon escorting her father to his seat at the table. Her father smiles at her, and suddenly the universe has corrected itself. She manages a smile back, and Spirit wants to cry.

The elder Albarn sits and speaks, and it's strained. Soul and Maka converse with the relaxed ease of friends, partners, and roommates. Spirit gradually works his way into topics with them that get easier as the time passes. When it's all said and done, he's survived two hours or so of time (almost) alone with his daughter that hadn't degraded to insults or endless questions about why he was such a failure as a parent and a husband.

It's some sort of new record.

While Maka goes to clean the dishes since Soul cooked, Spirit is encouraged to lounge on the couch for a bit, because she still needs to talk talk. The man knew the pleasant atmosphere of dinner was too good to last, and even though every bone in his body screams at him to run away while they're preoccupied, he fights against that urge.

His oceanic eyes catch something that makes him want to squawk and holler, point enraged fingers and clutch the teen's throat, but he ever-so-valiantly resists that very prominent desire with hundreds of rational thoughts.

Soul slips behind Maka, wraps his arms lovingly around her waist, kisses the back of her neck (apparently paying no heed to her wispy ashen-blonde locks tickling his nose) before pulling away, saying that he'll leave them alone.

Awkward.

They're eighteen. Adults. Totally. Right?

(A different part of his emotional brain is outraged, because wasn't he eighteen when his daughter was born? He was hardly an adult then, and absolutely unprepared to have a child. He thinks to himself she's too old for me to be telling her how to live her life and also thinks, what a terrible, horrible idea. His conflicted thoughts keep his screams silent.)

Soul slinks off to his room, and Spirit thinks he can hear tones of swing jazz and soft rock playing in the apartment for the next twenty, thirty minutes. He tries to calm himself down, convince himself he's ready for anything. Maka sits next to him after she towels her hands dry.

He's so not ready.

For a moment, everything is pleasant. Maka isn't scowling or anything, and Spirit takes this as a good sign. After a while of sitting in silence, the girl—no, she's a young woman now—speaks to her father.

"You know, this whole thing was Soul's idea." Spirit feels temporarily defeated by the teenager and exasperated, besides. Of course. If it were up to his daughter, they would never meet, except by accident in the corridors of the school. "He said you did him a favor, and that we should, I dunno, bond…or something."

The redhead is so startled by this admittance that his neck almost snaps when he turns to see her flustered expression. Who knew being nice to Public Enemy Number One would actually come in handy? "Oh," Spirit very cleverly retorted. "Well that was very—" strange of him and he is up to something, I can smell it. "—nice of him."

Maka rolls her green eyes, looking entirely too much like her mother. "Stop that. Soul's too nice for something like that." Her father pulls a face and she chuckles lowly. "He's rough around the edges and very blunt, but nice nonetheless. Why don't you like him, anyways?"

The reasons he likes to think he dislikes the olive-skinned weapon are thus: he is a boy (1) that lives with his daughter (2) who has no sense of propriety (3), a low level of intelligence (4), an obsession with gothic literature, architecture, and depressing art (5-7), is overbearingly lazy (8-8.9), and constantly teases his perfect little angel (9-∞).

The truth of the matter is this: Soul has done more than replace his position by his daughter's side – he has been better to and for her than Spirit ever was.

He still lives with the young woman, but his supposed lack of propriety isn't from lack of manners – it's the opposite, really. The white-haired weapon had simply gotten tired of parading around for people that weren't worth his while, and managed to stay true to himself, rather than parroting around like a champion of good-will for Academy social occasions.

With regards to his intelligence, he's already said (to several people on several occasions) that he's got no interest in formal education, and by the time academics were something of concern for him, it was honestly too late for him to cram all that useless information into his brain. He hadn't started on that shit early enough, and he didn't see any point in anything besides practicals.

Soul refuses to apologize for his hobbies, however obscure, abnormal, or unpleasant they may seem to outsiders. The older he gets, the more confident and self-assured he becomes, and thus, the prouder he is of these things. Yeah, I like what I like. There's not a single damn thing your opinion is gonna change about that, either, he says.

Soul will admit to being lazy. He'd give anything to play some basketball for an hour or two and then lounge for the remainder of the day inside of the apartment. Maka is the one that comes to his defense in regards to that particular issue – he works hard to do his job. He works long hours in the field – works in his scythe form until he sweats, cries, bleeds. But he's content to lie in the desert sun at the end of a long week, burgundy eyes sliding shut and serrated teeth hidden behind smiling lips. He works hard to keep up with their peers, works hard to maintain his friendships, his lifestyle, and his confidence. He works hard to pay the bills with jobs that don't come singularly from the DWMA. He works hard to give Maka nice things, to fund his hobbies, to travel the world on vacation.

The teasing…well, that's just his sardonic personality. Spirit (deep down in the darkest, farthest reaches of his heart) knows that Soul doesn't mean anything truly cruel by his taunts and jests, if his jagged smirk wasn't enough of a tell.

In the end, Spirit's conclusion is that Soul, truthfully, is far more deserving of the bond he shares with the young meister. He dislikes the boy because Soul's superior to him in every way.

"I just don't," Spirit says at last, unwilling to diverge into that particular bout of self-loathing this evening. "What did you want to talk about, sweetie?"

"Nothing special." Maka shrugs, inching tentatively towards her father. "This may have been a favor to Soul…but, in the end, you are still my Papa."

She's sitting next to me—she's leaning on me—she's smiling and leaning on me and sitting next to me! Spirit tries to contain his excitement, telling himself that he will celebrate later. "You really…mean that?"

Maka is mature enough to sigh in resignation and speak again. "I mean, I still don't respect you at all, but you are my father, I guess. It's gotten easier for me to hate you less since you got divorced." The redhead feels like he's been stabbed in the gut, but he supposes her words make sense. "You've saved my life a couple times, too. I guess it's more like…I've realized that you're still my dad. You still love me and want the best for me, even though you're a completely unreliable moron."

Spirit takes the shining parts of her sentences along with the cruelty downright happily. Hell, Maka hasn't been this nice to him since she was seven years old. "Thank you, sweetie." He moves to put his arm around her, and then sucks in a deep breath. "But you have something else to tell me, right?" He may not be an expert on reading Soul's intentions (be they good or bad) but he is well versed in Maka's tactics. He has a sneaking suspicion of what, exactly, she's been buttering him up so much for.

"If you already know what I'm going to say, then why did you ask?" Maka's throwing curveballs, as per usual. Damn. Her green eyes flit up at him, and he resists everything in him that screams too young, too soon. She's eighteen. She's not his baby girl any more. "You are the last to know about us. I was planning on telling you one free weekend anyways, so dinner tonight was a good opportunity."

"Well, if you're gonna be that way, you already know what I'm gonna say, too." Spirit tenses, and his daughter nods slowly against him. "Soul's not as bad as I first thought he was years ago…but a boy's still a boy. I want you to be careful. I know you can protect yourself physically…but I want you to take care of the Maka in there, too." At his accentuation, he points to her heart.

She giggles softly. "I know, Papa. Soul's not you." If nothing else, Spirit is eternally grateful for that.

"Don't get married until you're thirty-two," the redhead chides, and his daughter elbows him in the side, flushing. "And definitely don't get pregnant!"

"If those things happen, that is most definitely my choice, and none of your business!" The red-faced blonde murmurs back at him, but he knows that she's cautious by nature of her upbringing, anyways. He feels guilty.

After a moment, he murmurs. "I'm sorry for messing you up so badly. I really don't mean that, sweetie, it's just…" He's really unprepared for this conversation, as shown his trembling hands and watery teal eyes. "You know."

Maka does know. "Yeah. I promise I'll be careful. Nothing like that is going to happen any time soon. I want to be a teacher. Soul wants to work on straightening out issues with the peace treaty. Y'know, politics, and all that. There's hardly time for us, let alone a kid."

Spirit's heart swells when he looks down at his daughter – such a lovely young woman. He's already crying. "I trust you."

After a time, he waves goodbye, seeing himself out. He has a lot to think about during the evening, and he's not entirely sure he'll make it through his thoughts without alcohol.

/

It's another day at the Academy he has an ongoing love-hate relationship with. He's getting older, kids still talk too much, and Stein's still crazy. When he joins his co-worker in the smoking lounge around lunchtime, the gray-haired mad scientist snorts.

"Some people think they're eloping in some remote country in the south. For the record, Marie keeps up with all of this terrible nonsense because her department's running a betting pool on those two, not me."

Spirit rolls his eyes. "Obviously. Anyways, they're only twenty. Why is everyone in such a rush for my baby to have a ring on her finger?"

Stein fixes him this look, his olive eyes rimmed by dark circles and thick lenses in narrow slits. "Maybe because Soul proclaimed that he was in love with her at the last strategy meeting."

Kid had told him the truth about that matter upon his frantic inquiry, so the redhead sighed. "That's just a rumor."

His junior from years ago exhaled slowly, making sure to turn his head so Spirit didn't wind up with a face full of second-hand smoke. "He is in love with her, though."

The redhead finds himself at a loss of words, because he isn't really sure how to respond to that.

/

He takes Soul out for his first drink. Soul doesn't drink much – he says, for some reason, he doesn't like the smell of alcohol. Spirit doesn't press him for answers.

They end up learning about each other from each other – a novel occasion. Soul drops hints of his past without ever saying anything concrete, and the redhead gets the distinct impression that the white-haired young man doesn't like to think about it. Spirit, despite his fun-loving personality, isn't fond of recalling his past mistakes, either.

Near the end of their evening on the town, Spirit poses a question just as Soul straddles his motorcycle. "Do you love my daughter?"

Soul looks up, momentarily startled. After a time, he nods and replies quietly. "Yeah. More than anything."

"Me too." Spirit claps him on the back tearfully.

/

When the wedding announcement arrives in his mailbox, he wants to be infuriated, and he can't be anything other than pleased. That stupid brat finally got his life together and asked for the hand of the best woman in the world (in his quite-biased opinion).

Their wedding was exceptionally attended, and Spirit prided himself on crying less than thirty times before the day was over.

It was so strange, marrying off his baby girl. She was twenty-three, he was forty-one, and time had gone by far too quickly. He felt like just yesterday he had been helping her tie her pigtails and sending her off to the Academy for the first time. Even before that, he had been in a quick and dirty wedding himself, having knocked up the love of his life. He then proceeded to lose both her and his daughter because he kept looking for love in all the wrong places. Now, he looked around him, startled.

Maka, the star of today's show, was married. Whispers among students and staff had it that Tsubaki had finally garnered the narcissistic Black Star's attention as a woman and not a weapon, and even Kid – neurotic, particular, famous and otherworldly – was seeing someone. Depending on who you listened to, it was either some stranger from Europe, one of his dual weapons, or a ghost. Even Stein – and whoever the actual flying fuck saw his marriage coming ought to have warned the redhead – had finally tied the knot with Marie a couple years back. There were more children Spirit had seen mature into exceptional adults before his eyes getting together, as well as his peers finding love in adversity, and he stood there, lonelier than ever.

Also present at this wedding, and practically unavoidable, was his ex-wife. She regarded him with a friendly persuasion, looking business-like and wonderful, as always. Kami breathed her congratulations to Soul and her daughter with a trillion watt smile, and Spirit lamented his shitty history with her, wanting to be in the circle with the three of them so badly that he almost broke his rule of keeping his crying to a maximum of thirty spurts.

Eventually, Stein, sadistic as always, pushes the redhead towards them, simply jutting his chin and telling his old senior to get on with it.

The three of them let him in without complaint, chatting about menial things and having an altogether pleasant time. Spirit thinks if he had done things differently, he would have had his arm wrapped around the tall blonde woman with ringlets in her hair and steel in her eyes, teasing Soul and Maka for being newlyweds, and giving them tips for marriage. As it stands, he simply hopes he can make it out of this conversation relatively unscathed, but there's no need for concern.

Kami eventually goes her way, and Spirit goes his. Maka and Soul greet their friends happily, although Soul is still scowling in his typical way, and his daughter is beaming more brightly than the sun.

Spirit notes that the boy is not a boy any longer, and his slouch is gone.

/

"Did you hear? I heard that Professor Maka roamed the world with her husband for two years before she came back to teach here!"

"No way that's true. Her husband's the last Death Scythe, you know! The Academy wouldn't let him be off-campus for so long."

"He's in charge of business and international relations! Of course he'd be roaming around different countries aimlessly, with or without the professor! Somebody says that they saw him hanging out in a witches' bar last weekend, speaking of!"

"Professor Maka would flip her lid if that were true – I call b.s.!"

Before the man with red-hair that is streaked with gray can angrily interrupt, he is cut off by the little girl scurrying past him. "That's all very silly," she remarks, green eyes shimmering and snow-white hair pulled in a high ponytail. "Those are nothing but rumors."

Spirit looks at her and nods his agreement when the girl turns around, and smiles when she bobs around the corner. He mouths thank you at her and trails behind her, in charge of keeping an eye on the girl while her parents are out of town.

At least somebody in this godforsaken school finally understands his pain.