So I sort of wanted an ending that didn't feel like an ending. I captured as much of year 1 of this scenario as I feel motivated for at the moment: Maka and Soul fully together as partners+. Need a new project to shoot some energy into me. I still like this premise but I'm suffering from an inability to draw. This really would have worked much better as a comic the more I thought about it. In some other reality I'd be a manga-ka but in this one all I can manage is expressive stick figures. Alas!

Thanks for reading and generally being supportive of this project! Who knows what form the next one will take. Soul and Maka are some rich emotional territory.

Disclaimer: see part 1

"Do you think I should take up smoking?" Maka closed the front door before she took a careful seat on the couch. It felt like a million degrees in here, due to the high humidity on a summer day that otherwise would have been picturesque. The desert was a dry heat, it didn't make you feel every inch of your skin like this.

Soul watched her survey the carnage in front of them, dabbing at various cuts that were still oozing blood on her cheek and forehead. They had a break here until they got the order to press ahead and take another quadrant in the "empty" suburb of Detroit that had been colonized by a small conglomerate of covens. The witch's soul still felt stuck in his throat, like when he was forced to take his pill without drinking enough water. Stein claimed they would help suppress the psychological effects of the black blood, like a supernatural antidepressant. Maka had mumbled something about placebos when Stein had thrown bottles at them both.

"What kind of fool question is that? I thought your body was a temple, or whatever." Soul tried not to let his new orange converse sneakers get in the blood that trailed from the kitchen into the living room. There was an arm lying next to some dirty dishes in the sink at the end of that rainbow, but considering it used to be a weird octopus tentacle he preferred the arm. "You won't even let us eat junk food on a regular basis."

Maka sighed and leaned back on the creaky old couch, the faded neon flowers strangely gross even compared to the dissolving outline of a body laying the fireplace resembling half a squid. The witch had been squatting in a residence that had been abandoned for some time, and once she had died so had the illusion of a well-appointed town house and the air conditioning to boot. "Stein smokes, and he's a doctor."

"Yeah but the only thing between Stein and an asylum is… Marie."

"He has a point, though, I mean we all die eventually." She shrugged in her death child way, totally ok with sentiments that other people would consider morbid. "Do you want me to buy more junk food?"

Soul hated it when Maka got like this. It was almost like she was playing with the idea of throwing all her carefully constructed ideals straight into the toilet lately. He wanted to blame the black blood infection she had been fighting since spring, but Stein had confirmed her as being totally in remission with not one drop of perceptible black blood left in any of a dozen samples in the past month. He had told her to stop getting tested before she made herself anemic.

"Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean you should. Since when does me wanting to do something bad actually convince you it's a good idea?" That wasn't the Maka he knew and admired down to her recently painted green toenails. Soul picked his way past the blood trails and crashed on the couch next to her like he would at home, only to get a spring that would probably turn out to be rusty poke him in the ass. He'd been so worried about his new sneakers it hadn't occurred to him his pants would be in danger.

"You going to let me see how bad it is, or are you going to sit there holding your breath like I didn't just see you do that?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Soul said darkly, futilely willing his ass cheek to stop hurting.

Maka actually smiled at him, something he hadn't see a whole lot of today and it went a lot farther to easing his pain than the string of curses in his head. "I heard your pants rip. Are you going to pretend like you're bashful and I haven't seen it before, or are you going to let me check your injury? Good thing you don't need a tetanus shot."

"Wouldn't smoking make it harder to run or something?" Time to get the focus off him; waiting here was uncomfortable enough without Maka making comments about his anatomy. He was already getting sweaty where his back had touched the accursed piece of furniture, and he wondered what had possessed him to wear the navy compression shirt Black Star had insisted he buy. Fashion tips from a guy who thought an Ed Hardy button up was formal wear could only lead to trouble. Slinging a casual arm behind Maka and brushing her bare shoulder absently, he lowered his voice a tad. "And other aerobic activities…"

Maka snorted out a quick laugh, which took the edge off of her words. "Don't be gross. Besides, doesn't it relax you? There has to be a reason people start smoking, and can't stop."

"I think addiction has something to do with it." Still touching her shoulder, he felt her shiver.

Never the most sensitive guy, Soul started to think that while they were talking about smoking they weren't really talking about smoking.

"It's just chemicals in the brain. You can block the receptors, the serotonin hit, and people still keep smoking. Maybe it's really about habit. You get used to something and then that is your baseline. You wake up and have a smoke because that what you always did, and not doing it would be unnatural."

Was she talking about fighting? About them? Literally about smoking? Shit, Soul wasn't prepared for this at 6pm on a Tuesday in the middle of summer while they were waiting for orders. Come to think on it, they were coming up hard on the anniversary of the day he become her weapon. Humans got all crazy about milestones like this, based on what he'd gleaned from all the movies and TV he had watched in the past year. Of course, he hadn't experienced anything nearly so dramatic as in movies. If his life was a movie then Wes would have died in some suspicious fashion and he'd have to avenge his murder. Or he and Maka and Crona would have had some sort of crazy love triangle. Or Kid would have turned out to be some evil mastermind and they had unknowingly been the bad guys all along.

That last one could still happen. It was hard to think of yourself as the good guys when a corpse had been oozing mere feet away from you at some point and you were casually chilling on the deceased's couch.

"Well, I guess you have a shitton of weird habits already, so what's one more? Even if it made you stink."

"Excuse me? I have weird habits? Name three!" Maka had staunched the bleeding on her face but her gesticulating opened up a smaller cut on her arm that she then dabbed at while shooting Soul dark looks.

This was not a winning conversation, but she had asked and Soul wasn't going to disappoint her. "You keep a sword next to your umbrella, and I swear there's a grenade in the bathroom cupboard next to a bath bomb."

"Camouflage." Maka replied simply.

"You call a lawyer once a week to change your last will and testament. It's weird. Usually when people say 'you're out of the will' they don't make a call the next day."

"Hell if I'm giving Black Star our new TV after he decided to ambush me during Crona's reading hour! Besides, in our line of work it pays to keep a will up to date."

Soul tickled her shoulder with the tips of his fingers and Maka wiggled away from them and closer to his body. "It's totally logical and totally weird." Sitting this close to her, he could almost forget the puncture wound in his ass. He wasn't going to try anything funny while in this hell hole, but he wondered how twisted he was becoming that he had to remind himself that was inappropriate.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"I said name three, you named two." She wielded that fact like she had de facto won the argument due to insufficient evidence on his part.

Maybe human nostalgia was contagious because he was transported back to the moment he had first met her, injured and triumphant in that stinking basement. Soul chewed on the inside of his cheek absently, giving her the same considering glance from head to toe, but slower now than then, heated. Maka looked confused at his silence, but then tuning into the direction of his mood a blush spread high across her cheeks as her spine stiffened. If they'd signed a contract in blood, the way they should have from the start, would things have been different? Would this have been more professional than personal?

"Did you ever wonder what life would have been like if we partnered when we were younger?"

"You're changing the subject because you can't think of a third thing." Maka, dogged to the end, wasn't ready to let him slide away. He tickled her shoulder more to make her wiggle. With an arch look she finally answered his question. "I was still learning how to hunt and fight then. I wouldn't have been as skilled. And we would have had to live through one another's teenage years. Bad enough to be a teenager without knowing it's up to you to protect humanity from chaos incarnate."

Soul gave a slow smile as she ticked off downsides on each of her fingers. "Whatever. It could have been cool." He had successfully herded her nearly into his side, and it would only take a little push to have her fall into his lap. While Soul wrestled with his own withering morals, he was saved a decision by the front door being knocked open so forcefully one of the hinges came loose.

"Ok ladies! Tea time is over, get your asses in gear!" Black Star, looking untouched by battle if you discounted a huge darkening bruise over his bicep in the form of a hand print, galvanized Maka immediately. She already had on her partially ripped coat and was pulling on a pair of new gloves from a small zipper pocket near the back of her jacket just as Soul finally hauled his aching ass off the couch.

Pointedly, he was trying not to look at Black Star's face because he had a sinking feeling the mocking leer that was radiating from his sometimes dudebro said much too much about how that scene on the couch had looked to an outsider. Nostalgia was a trap for romantic idiots and he had fallen headfirst into it.

Maybe nostalgia wasn't the trap, maybe it was just Maka.

You think they know?

"What?" Maka hissed under her breath from her position behind a tree. Soul had transformed since there was no camouflage that would sufficiently hide his shockingly white hair or glowing red eyes in the twilight that was descending on the quiet neighborhood they were stalking their way through. Sid himself had taught Maka how to utilize her surroundings and blend. Then again, Sid had also taught Black Star, so some of the aptitude came from the pupil as well as the teacher. But Maka's zen-like oneness with her surroundings was getting jarred by Soul's questions.

Black Star, when we got into the car, he said something about… nevermind.

"Tell me…" Boarded up windows above them meant there was more danger in moving the foliage around than being seen from the ranch hour they were in front of.

I'm just hallucinating because stakeouts are as boring as shit. Nothing going on yet?

Across the street in a smart looking little brick house with an American flag waving in the front, lights were being switched on. Any moment all hell would break loose, but for the moment it was a study in normalcy.

"We're holding position." But Soul couldn't dangle information in her face and then not tell her. That wasn't something she could live with. "What did Black Star say?"

His initials are BS for a reason.

"Soul." She put as much sharpness into her whispered tone as she could. The pause in which she wondered if he was ignoring her was starting to get her temper flaring. On the outside Maka was perfectly calm and still with her feet under a bush and her body leaning against a tree, but there was no mistaking her slow boil through their connection. She didn't even try to hide it. Maka wanted answers, and by Death she would get them.

Something about you riding my motorcycle all night long.

Maka tried not to be angry, tried being the operative word. The problem was the anger wasn't at Soul, for finding what had to be least opportune moment to broach this topic, or even Black Star for being a vulgar idiot—all the anger was directed inward at herself. It was a quick spiral from 'Black Star knows' down to 'everyone must know' and took a brief detour down 'I wonder if my papa knows' before landing at the chilling 'mama must have known before anyone else knew.' None of that made sense, and Maka knew she was grounding her findings in emotional fears rather than empirical evidence. The most startling thing of all was how little she actually cared about what other people thought the longer she lived with the idea.

And absolutely none of this had anything to do with the battle she was about to run headlong into against an unknown number of witches that had holed up in the tiny bunker across the street. Once everyone was in position and the recon team had confirmed a headcount they would attack. Until then Maka only had her own brain to fight with. Emotion was winning.

"Black Star is an idiot." It was a statement murmured into the wind and so obviously true that Soul didn't find anything else to comment on for another couple minutes. The twilight faded a little more towards darkness, the evening simply going from humid to muggy, as they lost the day.

What would you do if people found out about us?

It seemed so innocent, asked in a mental tone so carefully neutral that Maka almost blurted out the first thing that came to her mind. The cold sweat that resulted from even thinking those particular words tied her tongue. She hadn't thought her emotions were so many steps ahead of her brain. This was much more serious than she had ever expected it to be. She had been royally stupid to think that someone who touched her body and soul could be isolated from her heart.

"I, uh,—hold on." Her phone buzzed against her leg, and she was saved sticking her foot farther into her mouth by Sid's clear voice proclaiming that there were only three birds in the nest.

A blue streak was already crashing through the roof of the brick house at top speed while Maka stood up and gripped Soul more firmly. Her cloudy mind sharpened in anticipation of violence. Waiting that extra couple of seconds also helped her duck behind the tree when all the pretty picture windows in the front of the house exploded towards the opposite side of the street along with a ridiculously grinning Black Star. With a spinning maneuver that acted to sling shot him back to the front door of the house, Black Star headed back into danger with Maka on his heels.

"YAHOO!" Came what had to be the least fearsome battle cry on the planet, but Maka following behind her friend as they dodged skeletal hands popping up from the well-kept lawn to arrest their forward momentum.

With a number of low sweeping movements Maka neatly separated wrists from bony arms as skeletons continued to attempt to rise from the ground. Kid would be pissed that the witches were practicing defensive necromancy, and she took careful notes in her mind even as they dodged spines from the broken windows that looked a lot like barbed javelins.

What seemed like several swarms of bees took off out of the hole in the roof Black Star had pioneered, Maka noted Kim and Jackie rocket after it from their perch in the tree leaving behind charred branches. The bee witch had to rest some time, and Kim would be on her. Fire and smoke against bees seemed like an easy win for her pink haired associate. The porcupine witch was irritating, but her missiles were at least large enough to dodge fairly easily. Once the light of evening was gone, however, dodging them would be difficult so they needed to get in close. Black Star and Kilik were fastest, and they were on the porcupine together, keeping her from launching more of those spines while Maka finished up with the skeletons in the front yard. Sid was presumably watching the exits, so either engaging in battle or flushing out the third would both be successful strategies. Maka slid into the house and tried to sense the witch's soul, but getting nothing but the one in the living room. Soul protect was the bane of her life.

Well?

They had edged into the dark hallway toward the back of the house. "I think she went for the bathroom since I don't see a basement door. Get ready, I'm going to kick the door in."

That isn't what… There was a significant pause, followed by: Yeah it's a good plan. Do that.

He sounded pissy. Their resonance wasn't wavering, but he managed to be dissatisfied with her at the same time anyway. There wasn't enough room in Maka's mind for killing and relationship questions simultaneously, a jarring combination that was throwing her off her training. If she could sit around all smug and thoughtful while Soul bludgeoned people to death with her body, maybe she'd have a different perspective. Time wasted arguing about feelings was time that witch could be preparing to attack them.

"Stop being such an idiot," she blurted out hastily under her breath, as she got ready to kick in the door. The kick demolished the flimsy door and thin shelf blockade that had been behind it. Thick boots for the win! "You know I couldn't go on without you." The intensity of her emotions bled into their connection—truth without precise words.

Soul's blade suddenly went so hot and huge with energy as she swung him into the narrow bathroom that she brought the whole roof down in that corner of the house. Buried in rubble, tile, plaster, and with water shooting out from broken pipes, Maka was trapped and angry as a wet cat. She watched what looked like some sort of giant salamander scramble out the narrow window and no doubt disappear into the back yard, minus a good swath of wiggling tail that she noted in the decimated bathtub to her right.

"Way to dial it up to 11 Albarn!" Black Star said as he gave her a hand to struggle out of the rubble a few minutes later once the fighting in the other room had ceased. Soul had gone conveniently still and silent, as if embarrassed that he'd been practically made of pure plasma previously. "But it's way cooler when you catch more of the witch than some gross tail." Tsubaki was removing rubble from around Soul, careful not to pick him up while he was in weapon form.

"At least I didn't have to attack mine two on one like you and Kilik. By the way, you have a spine in your shoulder." Maka coughed at him, wringing out her wet jacket onto the hallway floor, hoping the broken ground wouldn't give way down into the foundation. She was wet and dirty already.

"What?" Black Star only just seemed to notice what looked like half a broken javelin protruding from his shoulder and out his back. "Oh. Ha ha, shit."

While they waited for some of the younger hunters in training to come clean up the scene, Maka sat on the front porch of the house she'd done some amateur bathroom remolding to, and tried to look disapproving while Black Star danced away from Nygus and Tsubaki. The demon women were trying to convince him that they needed to get the spine out of him and check for poison, while Black Star was convinced they should leave it alone until he had access to either a bottle of tequila or a whole lot of painkillers. Tsubaki was trying to liken it to pulling out a splinter, (if a splinter had a barbed spine at one end) when Soul sat down on the steps next to Maka with a grimace.

"How's the war wound? We could buy you a hemorrhoid pillow when we get home." She scrubbed at some of the caked dirt on her face with the heel of her palm, hard and itchy from getting wet and drying off again.

"A what?" Soul looked at Maka in confusion while she sighed—yet another thing demons never had to deal with: hemorrhoids.

It was like some curse, her inability to make people laugh. "Forget it."

Other than a couple lights left undestroyed in the house, and one streetlamp, the rest of the neighborhood was overgrown, boarded up, and dead dark. The lack of light let them see the stars brighter than from their apartment at home. It would have been peaceful if not for the stark white bones and fragments of skeletons all over the lawn and the caterwauling from Star. Kilik had found the water line control with the help of the twins and shut it off, so there wasn't even the incessant gurgling coming from the back of the house.

"We're going to get reprimanded for losing the witch, you know." Maka mentioned it casually, not really minding failure for once. That huge glowing arch Soul had transformed into screamed pure power, and if he could do it once he could do it again. That was a win in her book, even if this battle hadn't gone the way she wanted.

"I'm surprised you let getting buried alive stop you. We could be running through poison oak and blackberries hunting down that witch right now." Soul spoke casually, but his body looked tense as he placed one smooth too warm hand over hers. Publicly. Affectionately.

Maka felt her insides recoil, knowing that everyone would be here soon and feeling a familiar fear of discovery. But then, if now was the time for bravery, she'd take all her lumps at once. Might as well be reprimanded for all her crazy decisions in one night. It was an impulsive move, but one that had been a while in the making. "Easy for you to say, demon metal doesn't react to poison oak. And you were way too pleased to put that cream on my legs before."

Kilik looked over at them, arching a curious eyebrow at their linked hands and Maka pointedly didn't pull away from Soul as she felt the weight of that gaze. She had been fighting all her life, this didn't seem any different. Let the judgement come, Soul was more important to her than other people's shallow disapproval. Maybe she'd take up smoking too and call it a day.

"Papa's going to murder you, you know." Maka leaned over and planted a solid kiss on Soul's lips before taking her now clammy hand back from his to brush more plaster from her hair. If she got up the guts she might have more tender words for him later tonight, but for now this was all the truth she could offer.

Soul was visibly shaking, shocked somehow, as he gave an all too casual laugh. His emotions were clearly too scrambled for him to know what to do next. He settled on doing nothing, a default for him so predictable Maka wasn't sure if she wanted to laugh or hit him.

"You taste like dry wall."

"Shut up, Soul."