Fandom: Soul Eater

Pairing: Soul x Maka

Warnings: This was meant to be sad. I was in a sad mood, but it's some of my best writing so I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

a/n: I was supposed to be writing some fluffy stuff, but do you ever get in that mood when the only thing you can write is something super sad and depressing? Welp, here I am.

Sometimes he remembered her. He remembered who they were, what she meant to him. He remembered the careful dance they had done around each other, one step forward, one step back.

He doesn't try to remember. He doesn't want to remember, because remembering brings a spiking pain back to his stomach, and confusion to his head, and he can't breathe all of the sudden when he does. She's everywhere though, in the green grass that resembled her eyes, in the papery scent of a bookstore, even when he gets a headache, he's reminded of that stupid book she always used to hit him with.

He can still feel her hand, the soft skin of her palm; not calloused because of the thick white gloves she always wore, the way her finger clutched around his own like it was the end of the world. He can still feel her arms, hesitantly wrapping around his frame, feel her nose as it presses into his shoulder. The first time she hugged him, it was a surprise. It was tight, warm, and more then a little awkward. Still, he had found that they fit together like those odd pieces of a puzzle, the ones that don't look like they should fit together but irrevocably do.

Kid is worried about him. He sees it in the other man's eyes strange golden eyes as he sits the Death Scythe down, his spine rigid. She would have been sitting like that right now, her back straight like there was a stick up her ass. She used to say it was only proper to sit like that.

He does the opposite of what she would do. He slumped in his chair, ruby eyes moving away from the man before him and fixing instead on the perfectly symmetrical tiles that adorn Kid's office.

"Soul—" he began, his voice wavering.

"Can you hurry this up?" Soul broke in, his voice a rude snort. He doesn't want to be here, doesn't want to be walking in these halls. The halls she used to walk in, with that odd little walk of hers, her books clutched tight to her chest like they might fly away. There was too much of her in this place. Too much for him to be here at least.

"No, we can't," a voice snapped, and he's surprised to see Liz swing into the room, closely followed by Patty. She looked older; her golden hair longer, her blue eyes brighter, her body leaner. "What are you doing to yourself Soul?"

"I'm not doing anything," he protested, glaring instead at her.

"That's the point," Kid said, breaking in.

"You need to get out and about again!" Patty said happily, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

"I'm fine thanks," he replied sarcastically, "just stay out of it."

"We can't do that anymore Soul," a kind voice said, and Tsubaki stepped into the room. What was this, a fucking intervention? "This isn't what Maka would have wanted."

"Well people don't always get what they want," Soul snarled.

He can't ever her last words out of his head. "Stay strong."

Looking back, he wondered if she knew. He wondered if she knew that something was coming for her, something she couldn't even outrun with him by her side. He wondered what could have sensed.

Stay strong.

How on the world could he stay strong when he was remembering their first kiss? The way they had shouted at each other before it happened, the way the tears had streamed frantically down her face as she shouted that yes, she loved the fucking idiot he was. He remembered pulling her in, and he had said something, something that made her smile and laugh once more when he kissed her. He couldn't remember what exactly he had said that night, and it tore him apart.

He did remember the way their lips had crashed together, desperately seeking more, the way she had tasted like watermelon chapstick and smelled like coconut body wash. He remembered the way they laughed afterwards, their entire beings shaking with mirth at how they had been such idiots. They had both loved each other this entire time, and yet were stupid enough not to realize it until it was almost to late.

"Soul," Tsubaki's voice is soft, and it reminded him of Maka's voice when she was on the verge of tears, looking up at him with those big fucking green orbs, her bottom lip quivering.

"Don't," he bit out.

"Soul," Liz's voice is shaking, "Maka's not coming home. You need to stop—" "Waiting?" he suggested, "Because we never found her body Liz. You don't know. You don't know a damn-fucking thing. She can't be dead. She wouldn't leave any of us like that," he stood up and jabbed a finger her direction, "Stop acting like she's not going to come back, because that's bullshit."

Maka would have been angry with him for losing his cool like that. She would probably Maka Chop him into oblivion, without batting an eye. Or maybe she would pull him out into the hall, give him a lecture, and inquire as to why he was actually acting that way. "Let's stay cool."

He stood up abruptly, his chair scraping back with an ugly sound. Liz looked offended, but he couldn't really give a damn. She needed to hear it. They all needed to hear it. They all needed to understand that he couldn't give in.

"But Soul, we did find her," he pretended he didn't hear Patty whisper at all.

It would break him into a million pieces.

He pushed his way out of the room, ruby eyes lazily flickering around the hallway beyond. His feet turn automatically in the direction of the library, as if trying to take him in the direction of his long gone meister.

Maka's not coming home.

He tried to tell himself that it wasn't true. Surely she would come home; surely she had just fallen asleep at the library again.

She was just… four years late. That was okay, he wouldn't be angry, as long as she came home.

As long as that terrible nightmare he had wasn't true. The one where he was a scythe in her hands, the one where she tosses him to the side, so he clattered against the pavement and she took the blow the murderer had been aiming. Crawling over to her body and begging for her to wake up, his hands drenched in her blood, that was a dream. Wasn't it?

His head hurt. His brain was numb, his senses dull. He couldn't tell which way was up or which way was down.

Since when had they become this, this dance? This endless search. Since when couldn't he remember the exact pitch of her laugh, or the exact way her hands felt, holding him in her hands.

Where had his meister gone? Why wasn't she by his side?

This is the dance they do, the one he's doing by himself now, one step forward, one step back.