and here's the very last part! i hope this story has entertained at least a few people!

The entire world is shaking.

Soul is trapped behind giant teeth and he's being jumped and jostled all over the place, vibrated out of his skull. There is a horrifying noise all around him, a roar emanating from somewhere behind. He opens his mouth to scream but the sound gets ripped apart in his chest, juddering out of him in weak, tiny pieces. There is a shift—above or below or around him, and he's falling, falling past the teeth and into the open air—

He lands with a thump on the cottage floor, and his eyes fly open. The wooden slats are shuddering under his touch ever so slightly, and the sound all around him is so loud that it takes him a minute to place it as music—there's music, something he's heard piped on the streets, but ten times louder, being blasted from somewhere.

He sits up, disoriented, and registers that he's naked. Last night comes rushing back all at once—Maka coming to him, upset, them talking and sleeping and then swimming together. He fumbles for the clock on his bedside table—slowly dancing towards the edge with the force of the sound shaking it—and sees that it's after noon. He's slept in, and he's remembering what today is: the storm.

Soul gets dressed as fast as he can and throws open his door, stumbling outside and staring around.

It's even louder outside, music echoing out over the pitch of swirling wind. The ocean is disturbingly still, as if it's dead, but the sky above is pulsing, bulbous clumps of cloud swelling and building like something living. They're moving as fast as a time-lapse video, pushing and crackling against each other, and it's like nothing he's ever seen before.

"What the fuck," Soul says distantly. He can barely hear his own voice.

When he looks at the water again, he realizes the level is much higher than normal; it's eaten away half of the sand. It appears smooth and still, but when he looks closer he can see that it's slowly climbing up the slope of the beach. It's almost lapping at the bottom of the dock, and Soul wonders crazily if this was why the cottage was so cheap to rent; if it doesn't stop advancing, the water is going to be spilling into his home in another twenty minutes.

The only thing in his head is that he's gotta figure out what's going on, and he's got to get to higher ground. Soul wheels around and starts running up into town.

The music gets louder as he runs, and when he gets to the edge of town there are tourists everywhere, staring up at the clouds, chattering in tight, excited voices, nervousbut sure somehow, with their guidebooks clutched in hand, that everything is going to be fine. Soul pushes through them, and when he turns onto the main road he can see that the biggest crowd has gathered in the centre of town,where there's a makeshift stage and enormous speakers jutting out over everything. The band onstage are just finishing up a song and Soul runs towards the crowd, desperate to find Tsubaki or Black*Star or someone who can tell him what he needs to know.

"Shibusen!" booms out a voice over the speakers. A cheer goes up in the crowd, and Soul looks up to see the mayor standing on the stage beside the band, wearing that weird black cloak he always seems to have on. "Hi! Hello! Welcome to Storm Day!"

A girl next to Soul almost elbows him in the face, and he stops trying to squeeze through the crush of people, instead standing on his toes to look around. It's not that big of a town, even with the tourists; someone he knows should be around here somewhere.

"That's it for my introduction," says the mayor. "Now here is my son to tell you about today's events."

The sky above gives a dangerous rumble as he passes the mic over to Kid, the pale man who gave Soul his tour of the town. The crowd gasps and starts gazing up at the sky, and Kid has to clear his throat twice into the mic to get their attention.

"As the coordinator of the Storm celebrations for this year," he says proudly, clearly prepared for this speech. "It is my honour to welcome you all to our island and to let you know the itinerary. The lightning should be starting any minute now, and we will have a viewing section on the cliffs for anyone who would like a more vivid look. There will be music performed here continuously throughout the storm, and it will be audible throughout the island although you may certainly stay here in the town square if you wish to feel more safe. Remember, the island is protected; no one will come to any harm today. That being said, we would like to remind you that if you have epilepsy or issues with constant flashing, it would be best for you to stay inside during the duration of the storm. The group heading towards the cliffs will be leaving now, so if you would like to come, just follow me."

He climbs down off the stage and the crowd starts shifting, the music starting up again. Soul is stuck standing in the middle of the swarm of people, frozen still, hearing the words "the island is protected" echo again and again in his head. He's heard it before—heard it a few times phrased just like that,and finally he makes the connection.

This is part of Maka's job then, he thinks. Dealing with this storm and making it safe for everyone is part of what she and the other water spirits do. If it's part of her job...if years have passed and this island has had storm after storm with nothing bad happening, then it should be fine, right? There's no reason he should feel as scared as he does about it all, but no matter how many times he tells himself that, it keeps coiling up like a nest of snakes in his mind, waiting to strike.

The crowd thins out considerably as the bulk of the tourists make their way to the cliff spot. Soon all that's left is fifty or so people watching the band or talking amongst each other. Soul stares blankly up at the stage for a solid minute before he realizes that the drummer is Kilik, and that he keeps glancing at a tall lady in the front row who is holding the hands of two toddlers.

Tsubaki.

Soul takes two steps blindly towards her, stopping when three women cross in front of him, chattering away, barely audible over the music.

"I totally think Edward should've come with us," says one of them, peering through her guidebook. "He's so morbid; the little story they have here of human sacrifice would be right up his alley."

"Well, they get away with it by making their legend have 'spirits', don't they?" says another. "Less shocking to the general public, I assume."

Soul's heart gives a vicious squeeze in his chest.

"Um, excuse me," he says, worming his way in front of the woman with the guidebook. "What legend are you referring to?"

"Oh, it's here in the guidebook," she says, tilting her book closer to him and laying a finger on the page so he can follow what she's reading. "Apparently the 'mystical phenomenon of the enormous yearly storm leaving the island untouched is caused by the water spirits who live all around the island and take care of it. Every twenty years the daughter of the current chief is sacrificed to the weather gods in order to ensure that the spirits have the power they need to protect the island for the next two decades." She laughs shortly and Soul hears it as if at a distance. "It's crazy, isn't it? Tourist places always have gimmicks like these."

"It's probably magnets or something controlling the storm," says someone else.

"Uh, thanks," Soul says faintly. Things are falling into place in his head, bits and pieces that he never thought to line up next to each other before. Maka saying her dad was someone "important" and that she's just gotten promoted after her twentieth birthday, Maka not wanting to talk about the storm, Tsubaki saying Maka deserved happiness and relaxation because they were running out of time—

Soul turns and stumbles through the crowd, eyes fixed on Tsubaki's long black hair. There is no word to categorize the roaring in his ears—he isn't feeling anything right now. He's hollow, and the storm is happening inside him. Onstage the guitarist sinks to his knees, fingers ripping up a sound that climbs higher and higher in dizzying waves against Soul's skull. He bursts through a group of people and claps a hand on Tsubaki's shoulder, yanking her around.

"You knew, didn't you?" he says.

"What?" says Tsubaki, eyebrows pulling together.

"Where is Maka right now?" he asks, voice tight.

"She's doing her job," Tsubaki says, and she's so...so calm about it that Soul can't take it.

"How can you fucking say that?" he hisses. "How can you just say that while she goes out there and—"

"Soul!" Tsubaki says, pulling the toddlers—Fire and Thunder, probably—closer to her knees and covering their ears. "Maka is choosing to be out there, what right do you have—"

"I can't—" Soul bites out. Words are failing him. The kids are shooting wide-eyed stares up at him, like he's a monster or something, and god, he feels like one right now, like he could rip apart the world. He backs away from Tsubaki, shaking his head, unable to believe anything that is happening. "I can't—I can't just stand here."

"Soul!"

He turns and plunges through the crowd, running back the way he came as fast as he can, faces blurring past like distorted masks in a carnival funhouse. None of it makes sense, and he runs until he's free of the crowds, until he can see the sea in the distance. The sky snarls above, churning black and horrifying, and he runs faster.

No wonder Black*Star hadn't wanted to talk about the storm, Soul realizes. Maka is his best friend, and maybe Tsubaki can take the view that Maka is choosing this of her own free will, but Black*Star is the type of person to want to smash down any sort of thing he perceives as evil. And god, last night—was this what she had fought about with her father? Did he not want her to go through with it?

All that talk about discovering more of the ocean must have been her pretending, saying what she would have done had she had the chance. She'd said it wasn't goodbye, but it was clear now that last night had been exactly that. And he can't just leave it at that.

He's only just turned onto the path that leads to his cottage when a fork of brilliant purple lightning plunges down into the sea ahead of him and the whole world goes white for a weightless, humming moment. Thunder rumbles up from all around, loud enough to shake the ground even more than the music; Soul is knocked off his feet, sprawling backwards onto the gravel. Sharp stones score lines on the flesh of his hands and elbows and his head is whipped back and—and he can see the sky above him starting to come apart. The clouds are black, lightning spitting down like gunfire, like spears, like whips, cracking constant and jagged all around him. The thunder is a pulse in his bones, rooting him terrified to the ground. It feels like the end of the world, and he can't move, expecting to get struck any second by a bolt of lightning.

He lies there on the ground, waiting for death, and it doesn't come. The storm is raging on, but he slowly comes to realize that there's no rain or lightning actually near him, and he realizes that he can't even feel any wind. He gathers every tiny bit of courage he has and sits up slowly, then climbs to his feet to look around.

He stops breathing.

"The island is protected," everyone had said, over and over. They never said how, or what they really meant, but standing there Soul can finally see it.

The lightning is streaking down from the sky all around him, but it's hitting only the water, creating a flashing, electric cage encircling the whole island. Directly above the island the clouds are dark and angry, but dormant all the same—all the danger is missing the island itself. For a split second, all he feels is awe, the fear retreating somewhere into his heart. This is what the water spirits can do for the islanders, this is their power—to completely divert all the lightning onto the water instead of the land.

And then he remembers that this peace has been assured by the sacrifice of some innocent girl twenty years ago, and that continued safety means Maka's death. And the fear is back.

In the distance the tourists are shrieking with surprise and joy and the music is a steadying beat even over the sound of the thunder. Soul looks back towards the town he's started to think of as his own and lets himself take it in for just a moment, the music settling something in his chest. Then he turns and runs down the path to his cottage. To the sea.

The water level is a foot away from the stairs to the cottage and the dock is gone, swallowed by the endless sweep of churning ocean. Soul doesn't pause, splashing into the water and pushing forward even as it soaks his shorts, splattering up onto his chest and his face, bone-chillingly cold, like the lightning has sucked all of the warmth out of it.

"Maka!" he yells. He's got to talk to her, make her see that she doesn't have to do this, that the island can survive the storm and she can survive with it. The water is getting deeper, waves crashing against his chest and shoving him backwards. His shoes sink and struggle to find grip against the sand and he pushes forward, pushes forward.

The closest spot where he sees lightning hitting is maybe twenty feet from where the dock would have ended if it was still visible. With each strike the water reaches up to meet it, like hands forcing it back, and Soul knows if he gets far enough out, the spirits will hear him. Maka will hear him. The air sizzles with electricity, and panic works with the waves, trying to keep him back—how far can he go? Is he going to get struck, is he—

"Maka!" he shouts again. "Maka, you don't have to do this, Maka please don't—"

His foot slips and he goes under, the cold crush of water paralyzing him for a horrifying, liquid moment. His mouth is open; water floods in, and when he surfaces again he's choking, flailing for a foothold. He's never been a strong swimmer—he's never been a strong anything, not a musician, not a student, not a person. He can hear muffled voices somewhere behind him, cutting in and out like performers with faulty mics, yelling his name. He doesn't know if Tsubaki followed him or if it's someone else, but he doesn't look back. He's come too far, and he's doing this.

The ground is gone and he dives forward, swimming straight into the blackness of the ocean. The beat of the music is pounding in his ears even over the ever-present thunder, and he focuses on that instead of the mind-stopping fear. He can't feel his arms or his legs really anymore, and swimming with his head above the water is almost impossible with the waves constantly crashing on his face. The horizon keeps pitching and rolling in front of him; he catches glimpses of his surroundings in the trough between the waves, and then they're gone, wiped from him with the curling slap of water on his body. He surges forward, because he can't do anything else, and screams Maka's name.

There's a split second where he's at the top of a wave and the ocean is spread out in front of him—no horizon separating the water and the sky, just a deep curve of blackness as far as he can see— and in the white flash of lightning he thinks he sees the familiar head and shoulders of a spirit out in the water.

Soul opens his mouth and the wind that he couldn't feel on the island comes all at once, throwing him down into the icy water. He flails his way back to the top, catching one shallow breath of air before there's rain hammering down on his face and the waves are rolling him under again. Maka, he thinks. I have to keep going, I have to—

There's no up and no down anymore. His mouth is still open and he's swallowing automatically, so, so afraid that it feels like he's swallowing down the whole world. It's too dark underwater. It's too dark.

There's pain in his chest and on his arm and he's being pulled by the arm. He's floating through space, blown into a million pieces, and the pain and the pull is all that's real.

He's thinks someone's saying something, but he can't hear anything except for the music.

Suddenly, Soul is awake, with an unknown chunk of time missing from his brain. He's lying down. Something is dripping down onto his face, and he's coughing. It feels like his lungs are going to turn inside out.

"—stupid, fucking idiot! What were you doing, how could you, how could you do that?"

Soul's pretty sure the voice is aiming at him, but he can't defend himself because he can't breathe. His insides are made of liquid, and the coughing isn't doing anything. He tries to say something, anything, but then there's more swearing above him and the unmistakable feel of a mouth pressing to his. Lips are prying his apart, and then—then the person sucks, or does something, and the water in Soul's chest flows up his throat and directly out of his mouth into the stranger's. The sensation is disgusting, and when the lips move away from his own Soul instantly starts coughing again, his whole body cringing around the sudden emptiness in him.

"What the fuck," he croaks.

His head wrenches to the side, cheek burning.

"What the fuck?" repeats the voice, slightly hysterical. As his senses return, he's slowly realizing that there's something familiar about the sound. "I should be saying what the fuck! As in what the fuck were you doing out there?"

Soul opens his eyes, and Maka's above him, hazy and whole and alive, her hand raised like she's going to hit him again. He can sense a few other people hovering beyond, but he doesn't bother to look, focusing instead on her. Water is dripping from her face onto his, and he smiles weakly, stupidly glad to see her.

"I was trying to save you," he says hoarsely.

She looks like she's going to spit fire. "Save me? Are you—I'm doing my job, I don't need saving! I'm a water spirit, you're a human—you get hit with lightning, you're almost sure to die! You almost drowned, and I had to abandon my post to make sure you didn't! What if I didn't see you in time?"

"Sorry," he says. "But it's okay. I didn't, and you're here now, and you're fine."

"Yeah," she says. "And you're going to stay here, and I'm going to go back and protect this damn island, because if I stay here much longer you really will have fucked everything up."

She moves to stand, and Soul blinks up at her, blurting out, "No, you—what? You can't go back out there!"

It happens in an instant—there's a shout, Maka looks up, and then she's moving, impossibly fast, lunging into place just as a crack of lightning splits away from the rest and surges down towards them. Maka takes it through her hands and the electricity courses through her, turning her into a blaze of light for a split second. Then she's shoving it back up into the sky and staggering on the spot, smoking slightly.

"Maka!" Soul cries, struggling up onto his elbows. There are hands at his shoulders suddenly, holding him from sitting up any further, and he's too weak to fight against it. He can see now that he's been dragged up to the path to town, and that the storm is raging on in front of him.

Maka doesn't look back. "You guys take care of him. I've left a hole in the defense—I've gotta get back."

And then she's running down the hill and back into the churning water. Soul lurches forward against the hands on his shoulder, yelling something—he's not even sure what—over the sound of Black*Star and Tsubaki's voices telling him that it's going to be okay, that it's fine. Tsubaki makes sense, but Black*Star?

"She can't go back out there," Soul rasps. "She's gonna die, she's gonna get sacrificed—"

"Oh," Black*Star breathes. "You dumb motherfucker."

Everything goes black.

Soul's seated at a grand piano in a strange room. There's cheap jazz music coming from somewhere, but not from him; his hands lay flat on the keys. The room has no walls, only a circle of voluminous red curtains all around him, and the floor is shiny red and black tile. Occasionally the curtains move, twitching like there's some sort of power coursing through them.

There's a tiny red demon in a suit sitting on the piano.

"Well, you've fucked it up this time haven't you?" he says nasally.

"Shut up," Soul says.

"Made a right cock out of yourself. The drop out wonder to the rescue."

"Shut up."

"Don't try to tell me this was all just over a girl, no matter how extraordinary. No, what was going on was you thought you were losing everything all over again for the third time—couldn't make an island full of murderers your home, and couldn't face the idea of trying to find another place after this, huh? Was that what you were doing out there? Not trying to save anyone, but just trying to kill yourself? End the failure?"

"Wes!"

There's a new voice, a child's, thin and scared, and Soul turns sharply. Behind him is a bed, and there's a sniffling, white-haired kid of maybe six or seven sitting up in it, rubbing at his eyes.

"Wes!" the kid cries. "I had that nightmare again!"

"Go back to sleep, Soul."

Wes appears in the shadow of the curtains on the other side of the room. His face is blank, and he isn't the right age to match the Soul in the bed—he's as old as when Soul last saw him, at their parent's house before Soul left for the island. When he speaks, it's their father's voice.

"You'll wake up your brother, and you know he's got to rest before his big recital tomorrow. Go to sleep. It was just a nightmare."

"I want Wes," the kid sobs. "It was the demon thing again, he won't leave me alone."

"How tragic," the demon says.

The kid cries and cries, and then disappears all of a sudden, leaving nothing but the bed and the rumpled sheets.

"I can't leave you alone, Soul," the demon says. "Who else would let you know how worthless you are?"

"No," says Soul, shaking his head. Wes is still there at the side of the room, watching, and Soul can remember when he was the kid dreaming in the bed, and woke up crying for him. Wes had always come to calm him down—the demon can't rewrite history. "Fuck you. This is a dream."

"Of course it's a dream," the demon says derisively. "Recurring. But you're supposed to be an adult now, right? You're supposed to be over these."

"I am," Soul says. "And I'm going to wake up."

His hands twitch on the keys, and one finger sinks down, pinging out a clear "G" note. It sounds right somehow, and the demon flinches back from it, flickering. Soul grins and plays it again, over and over like a bell. The ground shifts beneath him, the sand and sparse grass of the island pushing up through cracks forming in the red and black tiles. The cheap jazz is fading and in its place snippets of Soul's own music is leaking through. Soul closes his eyes.

When he opens them again, it's to the familiar wooden roof of his cottage. It's quiet—he can't hear the storm or any music anymore, and he sits bolt upright, terrified.

"Whoa," comes a voice. "Calm down."

Maka is sitting in a chair next to his table, his guitar propped on her knees. She's got one finger on the "G" string, like she was just plucking at it. Soul stares at her, relief and confusion paralyzing him.

"You're okay," he breathes.

She smiles softly. "Yeah, I'm fine. Which almost was more than I could say for you."

"I don't—" Soul can't stop staring at her. "I don't understand. How are you—what is—the storm's over?"

She nods. "It's been over for about twenty minutes now. You've been asleep for a few hours. It's about dinnertime. There's a celebratory communal potluck happening in the centre of town right now. Tsubaki was watching you during the storm, but once it was over I told her to join Kilik and his kids and Black*Star. Said I could watch over you. Apparently making sure you stay alive is sort of my thing today."

"Making sure I stay alive?" Soul says. "I thought—"

"That I was going to get sacrificed?" Maka cuts in. "Like in the story in the guidebook?"

"I—" Soul can feel himself deflating. Her tone is telling him that that's stupid, and she is indeed sitting in front of him, clearly not sacrificed. "Yeah."

"That's a story we made up for the tourists," Maka says. "It's a joke among all the islanders. Everyone knows it's not true. If you'd just have talked to Tsubaki for five more minutes before charging off to here, she could have told you that. But she had Fire and Thunder with her and she had to find someone in the crowd that they knew to watch them before she could call Black*Star and go after you and then—"

She moves the guitar off her lap onto another chair and leans forward, putting her face in her hands.

"You could have died," she says.

"I didn't want you to die," Soul says weakly. He's struggling to remember the surefire evidence he'd had that had convinced him to dive into the ocean after her. "You—you were upset when the storm came up and you didn't want to talk about it and neither did Black*Star and he's your oldest friend, so it seemed to make sense—"

"I'm going to tell you a story about the storm," Maka says, sitting upright again. "About twenty or so years ago, the year before I was born, the cloud spirits of this region—yep, there's cloud spirits—and the water spirits here kind of had a war. There was a faction of the cloud spirits that wanted to gain the power to ascend to space and become star spirits, and they were using their lightning to kill and then steal the life force of humans indiscriminately, which is forbidden. The other cloud spirits refused to stop them, and so the water spirits of this island fought back when our island was targeted, and we wiped them out. Every year since then, on the anniversary of the night the "Star Clan"—as the rogue cloud spirits called themselves—were wiped out, the remaining cloud spirits attack the island, just mostly out of spite."

"But none of the lightning was actually hitting the island," Soul says. "And that was down to the water spirits, right?"

"Yeah," she says. "We can manipulate their lightning and draw it to us. We're literally water, so it doesn't hurt us as long as it's spread out. Like, I guess ten spirit lightning bolts all at once on me would kill me, but that wouldn't happen with how we've got it worked out. There's something called the Lightning Squad, and it's a section of the military that's highly trained and has worked out how to deal with the attack so that it's basically harmless. I told you before that music calms us a lot, right? Well, it can help us sync up with each other too, so we use the music pumped out during the storm to keep on the same wavelength and get the right rhythm to just send the lightning back. I've been part of the squad since I was fifteen, and my dad worries about me a lot, but it's not as dangerous as it sounds for us." She sighs, rubbing at his forehead. "The reason I didn't want to talk about the storm though is because I'd been promoted to the head of the Lightning Squad this year, which is great, but also really stressful. I was worried I'd fuck up, so I just didn't want to think about it until I had to."

"Oh god," Soul says slowly. "You were doing your job and then you had to stop and save me and—I almost ruined it all, didn't I?"

She shrugs. "Honestly, yeah. But it was just a moment—my crew were able to take the added strain that me leaving for a minute left, and—I wasn't gonna leave you to die. I couldnt've done that. Especially since you were out there for me."

Soul flops down on his back again, staring up at the ceiling. "Fuck."

"What were you doing, Soul?" Maka asks, her voice small. "You can't have been just trying to save me, you—you barely know me, and you almost died. You weren't trying to..."

Soul can hear the dream demon in his head, telling him he's worthless, asking him if he was trying to kill himself.

"No," he says, and it's to the memory of the demon more than her. "I don't really know what I was doing but I—I think I just wanted to do something right. Something good."

There's silence for a long moment. Soul turns his cheek into the softness of his bed, and watches Maka. She looks tired.

"You came to visit me and get me to play for you on the dock these past few weeks because you were stressed out about the storm, didn't you," he says. "Music was helpful, and I was right there."

"Oh, don't give me that," Maka says, hearing the accusation, no matter how slight he had meant it. "Like you weren't getting anything out of me hanging around—you were using me as your magical water spirit muse thing. Look at this weird girl-thing, how inspiring."

"Maybe at the start," Soul admits. "But it wasn't..." I may have started liking you because of that, but now it's more, he wants to say.

"We're both more than what we wanted out of each other," Maka says. "And for me, I—I wasn't lying, I do like your music. And you."

Soul blinks dumbly at her. He has no idea if she means that the way he does, deep in his chest, but she meets his eyes and smiles at him and he smiles back, helpless. With her sitting here in his cottage, there is no sign of the magical side of a water spirit, just the human one. Neither side seems wrong for her anymore.

"I'm really happy you're not dead," Soul says.

She laughs until her whole face is red. There's tears in her eyes.

"Me too."

They head down to the town potluck as soon as Soul feels up to it and Maka deems him healthy to walk. He's a little weak on his feet, and when they reach the stalls and walls of people that have sprung up in the town square, she takes his hand and leads him through, and doesn't let go for the rest of the evening.

They meet up with Black*Star, Tsubaki, Kilik, and the two little kids. Soul apologizes for frightening them earlier, and they hide from him behind Kilik's legs anyway. Tsubaki yells at him for scaring them all with his stunt, and then grudgingly gives him one of the rolls that are her and Black*Star's contribution to the potluck. Black*Star's still twitchy from the storm, pissed off in a vague way—once he hears what Soul's theories were for him hating the storm, he laughs shortly and explains that he's a cloud spirit himself and hates them all.

"He's the last of the group that called themselves the Star Clan," Maka whispers to Soul when Black*Star's wandered off in search of more food. "He was just a baby, and when the big fight went down, the cloud spirits all abandoned him—even the ones from the other factions that could've taken him in. Cloud spirits can fly, but they learn when they're about two, and he hadn't learned yet, so he literally fell out of the sky onto the beach."

"So the island is like his adoptive family," Soul says. "Can he fly now?"

"No," Maka says. "But he can shoot a little lightning. He had to give you a controlled shock when I pulled you out of the water to get your heart started again. Oooh look, a cheese platter!"

Soul blinks, absorbing the knowledge that he had been even closer to death than he had originally thought, and follows her to the cheese.

The whole town is out in force, tourists and islanders mingling freely. The sky above is a soft pink fading into a deeper blue farther away from the sun, and the clouds are gone completely. The storm has cleansed the island somehow, and there's an atmosphere of camaraderie between everyone Soul can see. He runs into Liz and Patti at Kid's stall of tiny finger sandwiches, helping him rearrange the display to be symmetrical again everytime someone takes one, and it's a nice break to talk to people who don't know he ran screaming into the ocean today. He sees Kim and Jackie making out over a park bench, and Tsugumi and her various girlfriends talking to Sid. All around him are people he knows, people who have waved to him on the streets, people who have asked him how his day's been when they've bumped into him at the grocery store or the pub. His body is still partially in crisis mode—recovering from his plunge in the sea and still expecting something worse to happen—but as the evening goes on and Maka's hand stays warm in his, he slowly starts to trust in the island again.

Maka drags him over to a group of vaguely intimidating people who are apparently part of her Lightning Squad, and introduces him to them. The introduction is clearly a small punishment for his stupid actions today—one of the spirits, a man called Stein who wears a heavily patch-worked lab coat, gives him a look like he wants to cut him open, and another, a woman named Blair, looks like she wants to eat him up in a very different way. It's disconcerting, to say the least, and Soul knows for sure that even the normal looking blonde woman who stops Stein in the middle of a tirade of threatsprobably hates him more than a little bit for endangering the whole island and himself. When they finally walk away, Maka shoots Soul a sharp-edged smile, and Soul smiles weakly back. He's glad he's not a water spirit.

When the sun sets and the stalls all light up with glowing square lanterns of every shape and size and colour, Maka finally untangles her hand from Soul's to go and talk to a tall, red-haired man who she says is her father. Soul understands that it's not a conversation for his ears and he sits down on a bench beside Kid's stall and turns his back on Maka to watch Tsubaki and Black*Star playing tag with Kilik's kids.

Kilik sits down next to him with a sigh.

"They look like they're having fun," Soul says, nodding towards Fire and Thunder. Kilik smiles.

"Yeah," he says, strangely heavily. "They like Tsubaki and Black*Star a lot." He laughs quietly. "Thunder introduced them as 'my family' to the guy running the lemon jam stall earlier."

"Lemon jam?"

"Black*Star swears it's good."

There's a brief silence, and Soul looks over to see that Kilik is staring at the ground.

"Do you think" says Kilik slowly, "that…that something like that could work?"

"What, the three of you?"

"The five of us," Kilik corrects. "I'm not worried about the three of us. They've made it clear to me recently what they think about that."

Soul smiles. Black*Star's caught Fire and is parading around with him lifted high over his head, Fire squealing in delight. "I think you should ask Black*Star and Tsubaki about the five of you, not me. They're more likely to know. But I'm pretty sure unconventional is sort of a thing around here."

"Almost dying makes you wise, huh?" Kilik asks. "Or is it falling for a water spirit that does that?"

"Fuck off," Soul says, and the sudden stab of guilt and fear in his gut is cooled by the sound of Kilik's laughter.

Thunder trips and Kilik jumps up instantly to go see if she's alright. Soul's alone only for a moment before Maka is back, appearing beside the bench. Soul stares up at her, feeling stupid and intensely lucky.

"Hey," she says, smiling. Soul holds out his hand without thinking and she takes it immediately, lacing their fingers together. "What were you and Kilik talking about?"

"Oh, you know," Soul says, standing slowly. "Family and homes and stuff. How'd it go with your dad?"

Maka shrugs, but her smile doesn't dim. "Fine. He's an idiot, as always, but…family, right?"

"Yeah," Soul says. Around him the town is still bustling away, lit up in the soft reds and blues and yellows of the lanterns, and Maka's hand is warm in his. He squeezes her fingers and gets an answering squeeze in return. "Yeah."

God, today has been one of the biggest failures of his entire life—he tried to save someone and ended up needing to be saved—and yet the sickness in his stomach is only slight, pushed back each time it tries to rise by the sight of Maka still there beside him. He hasn't ruined everything. He's still here. Maka's still here. The island is still here.

And if he is falling, he knows there's arms there to catch him.

They eat food into the night, and when Soul and Maka part ways and he heads alone back down to his cottage, he doesn't dream—not of drowning, not of demons, not of anything at all.

A couple of weeks later, Wes calls and Soul picks up the phone. He sits on his bed in the morning light and tells him about the album he's working on, how he's found a couple musicians on the island to collaborate with on certain songs; Kilik and his drums, Kid on the violin, Maka and her voice and the sounds she can make with water. Wes sounds pleased for him, and when he jokes that it doesn't sound like the kind of music that their parents will play at their parties, Soul laughs along with him.

"So, you are planning on staying there then," Wes says. "For a while?"

Soul pauses and glances down at the bed, at where Maka is lying sprawled out and still asleep. Four days ago they had walked out to the forest and she had stood on a rock and kissed him. Last night she had fallen asleep in his bed in the middle of telling him a story about her mother's adventures in the Pacific Ocean. As soon as he gets off the phone with Wes, he's going to make her breakfast, and kiss her awake, and ask her out on a proper date.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I think this is home."