Author's Note: Here it is! I was going to do a cute little epilogue but then there were a few too many loose ends that needed to be tied for it to be little. Hopefully it's no less cute for the length. The sequel, Panacea, is underway and Chapter 1 should be up soon. There will be many similarities, but I want to focus on a more specific thread of mental illness: the things you start that get out of hand because they promised to make the illness stop. Witchcraft was started with and largely written during my initial bipolar episodes, while I was still trying to find my feet in the chaos of my own brain. But I've since learned how devastating it can be when something that has been helping suddenly stops and you've been well but aren't any more. So there will be some all out Madness Crona in Panacea, but not as much. Depending on what gets to you, it might also be grosser. But that's neither here nor there. Enjoy the bow, I always appreciate you thoughts, and continue staying safe during these unpredictable times!

Crona walked down the halls of Death Academy, his footsteps echoing, bouncing freely off the walls of the strangely empty building. No, that was an exaggeration; the whole building was far from empty. Teachers tapped chalkboards emphatically with long sticks, students shuffled between rooms with varying levels of urgency, sparring matches got out of hand, and food sources were being swarmed. Somewhere. It was just this particular hall that was vacant, just this part of the school that was devoid of life. He couldn't say he was overly broken up about that. In fact, it was according to his preference. Ragnarok still slept inside him, recovering from the overdose of magic that seemed to repress his soul. Soul and Kid and Black Star and everyone were, reluctantly, letting him handle things in his own way and time. Even Maka, who'd offered repeatedly, had been turned away. As he'd requested. He appreciated their concern and support and all that, but for now, with the wounds on his back and neck still raw and the remnants of the ordeal still whispering inside his head, he needed the space. This summons, this journey, this negotiation, he had to do them himself without hiding behind any one or any thing, as a person.

Rounding the corner to the final stretch before the Death Room's rather subtle entrance, Crona felt not his first shudder of uncertainty, but the least expected. Sitting in a chair just by the door, straight backed and tight, was Vera. She looked up when he came into view, combed black hair from her face with her fingers, and then sort of grimaced at him. It took him a moment to realize she was smiling, or at least trying to. Her jeans had holes that exposed her inner thighs, a fact she was not doing a very good job of hiding by crossing her legs, and her red sweater was fraying. Clothing from before, maybe the night of the fire, which was too worn to be kept and too special to be thrown out. When he got close enough to see that her eyes, though amber once more, hadn't quite lost their opalescent sheen she stood, rubbing her hands on her pants nervously and making another face he had to assume was welcoming. Or maybe it was more accurate to say he hoped it was welcoming, or else she was preparing to try and eat him…

"I'm sorry, I had the meeting before you, and, well," she rambled, giving up on her pants and starting to play with a stray thread, pulling at it until he stopped just shy of a conversational distance. "I figured, why the fuck not? You know?"

Crona frowned a little and tilted his head, unsure of what he was supposed to know. He'd been summoned by Lord Death to debrief the entire affair and make a plan for moving forward. He had not known Vera had been similarly summoned and wasn't entirely sure of the relevance to himself. There was some, surely, he just couldn't think of what it could be. Vera had been there in the alleyway, of that much he was certain, but the rest of their interactions were, well, most of them hadn't happened near as he could remember. When he didn't respond verbally she sighed through her nose and lifted her chin.

"Let's start over. I'm Vera Aven," she said, extending her right hand by habit.

The line where she'd contracted Black Blood stood out on her palm, pitch black against her agitated, red skin. His gaze moved to it and, though he couldn't recall how it had happened or what his involvement had been, knowledge that this was where her Black Blood was centered swelled within him. This sense of knowing and not remembering filled him with unease and his little frown deepened. Letting out the breath she'd been holding, Vera rotated her wrist so she could stare at the mark, then dropped her hand and her gaze. He hadn't meant to insult her.

"I'm Crona," he returned after a beat, extending his right hand to encourager her to re-offer hers. "Crona Gorgon."

"Gorgon…" she repeated, almost skeptical. "That's your mother's name."

"It is," he affirmed. "I am her child. I'm tired of pretending I'm not."

"Me too. Not with your mom, obviously. Just the part about pretending. Though I have to say, I'm not 100% on what I am and what I'm not anymore."

She took two steps towards him and brought her marked palm to his, gripping his hand tightly and giving it a firm shake. A sensation of rightness, of understanding, passed between the two. That feeling you get when you meet someone for the first time and instantly sense you've known them for years. So much so that Crona found himself speaking before he had the right words.

"You are… you're…"

"Your victim and your assassin?"

She said it playfully, with her first real grin, but Crona was taken aback. He pulled his hand from hers and instead grabbed his arm across his chest, looking off to the left.

"Right, guess you don't remember that part," Vera mumbled, licking her lips and nodding to herself. "That's something you called me once, and it's sort of really appropriate. Or it was. Here's the thing, some real shit's gone down and now I see that me and you, we're both victims and perpetrators. We've committed sins and suffered for the sins of others. I didn't think that kind of contradiction was possible, in fact I stubbornly believed the opposite, and because of that belief I…"

She trailed off, dropping her gaze and fidgeting with the fraying hem of her sweater again. Crona blinked at her and swallowed, unsure of what she was expecting of him. Unsure of what he even had to offer. There was something between them, the shared experience of being Pendra's plaything, Black Blood, and a power neither of them understood. These things were abstract though, and she spoke as if they knew each other in a literal sense. Which just couldn't be; his memories were too crisp for him to have missed such a thing. Or at least they felt too crisp. The sensation of the centipede burrowing into his head as her hot blood sprayed his face, the murky ache as Pendra infused herself into his mind, the sound Professor Stein's wrist had made when he'd crushed it and Maka screaming in the sand and Vera begging him to leave her be. To him it had been no different from picking up an unfamiliar tool, yet to her… what was it that Maka had accused him of?

"I'm sorry," he started quietly, shifting and letting his eyes scan the room and settle on her. "Maka said you're the one who found me, that you kept pushing until you could, and that I helped you. Now you have Black Blood because of me-"

"I have Black Blood because of me," she snapped lashing out and giving him a hot look, too irritated now to be nervous. "I'm here because of choices I made, things that I did. I knew there'd be consequences, even if I didn't understand them, and I chose to move forward anyway. Now I'm here, dancing around the point like a child because I never thought I'd meet Lord Death let alone get chewed out by him and live but nothing's been what I expected anyway so when he mentioned you were on your way I thought "fuck it!" So let's just do this and get it over with, okay!"

The old Crona would've recoiled from the assault, would've let his fear take over and ran away to reflect on how he'd deserved it. The old Vera would've desired that response, would've intended harm and savored his pain. Yet things had changed- they had changed. Vera meant nothing more than an outburst of frustration directed entirely at herself and Crona experienced it like a harmless gust of hot air. He could remain calm.

"What would you like to do," he asked after another long, mildly uncomfortable pause, unable to translate her expectant glare even though he had the strangest sense that it should've been easy.

She made a sort of offended face that was at once disbelieving and amused, shaking her head and smiling like before. Discretely, she glanced down at her marked palm and smiled at that too, nodding as if in agreement with something it had suggested. Then she lifted her chin, looked Crona dead in the eye, and spoke.

"You don't need to apologize to me; I'm the one who's sorry. When this all started, in a lot of ways I was your victim, but now I've made you mine. That was my intention, even though or perhaps because I didn't know you. Now I do… I know you. Maybe you don't know me, maybe you'll never remember the things your astral self said, but you know something? That doesn't matter to me one bit. What matters to me is that, moving forward, I want to be your ally. If you'll have me, that is."

"You mean…" Crona said slowly, blinking in persistent confusion. "My friend?"

"Yeah, let's not get ahead of ourselves," Vera outright laughed, bringing a hand to her mouth quickly to stifle the more than a little rude outburst. "There are a lot of things about you that are outright infuriating. Honestly it's like talking to a really mopey rock. Friend might be a bit much, but if I can help you in any way, doesn't matter how, doesn't matter when, I will. Let's just leave it there for now."

"Then," he curled inwards a little, gripping his arm tightly for a second before coming to a decision and extending his hand once again. "Will you let me be your ally too?"

"Guess it's only fair," she answered with a playful eye roll and another head shake, tucking a lock of black hair behind her ear with one hand and accepting his offer with the other. "Alright, allies it is."

Crona's little smile lasted much longer than it had any right to, under the circumstances. The warmth, though, that didn't fade even as he navigated the stairs and dizzying, guillotine arches and emerged onto the central platform. Fear chewed on his gut like an overgrown parasite, painful and nauseating and depressing because he'd been rid of it. Whatever else had come of Pendra, whatever he had sacrificed to get there, he had been free of his fear for just a little. Just long enough to remember what that had felt like, just long enough for the desolation of the fear to be measurably worse than the fear itself. And yet he pressed forward. Maka thought he was a person- a good person, someone who could do good things in the world and the rest of his friends agreed. They'd risked everything because they'd believed in him and he had not let them down. It was nice, the feeling that he'd pulled through for them, that he'd been able to accept the strength their friendship offered and do the impossible.

Yet their founding premise was his inherent goodness, something they'd looked for evidence to support rather than concluded independently. Vera had assumed the opposite, that he was fundamentally a synthetic monster incapable of personhood. Which secretly aligned more closely with Crona's own views, even as he struggled against it. But he'd changed her mind; he'd altered a perception that did not wish to be modified by anything, facts included. How he'd done this was still a mystery to him, yet the fact remained that Vera, too, had risked everything to save him. She'd made a contract with the Black Blood, given up some of her humanity to help him reclaim his, which could only mean that she believed he had humanity to be reclaimed. She'd gone from his self-proclaimed enemy to wanting to be his ally, and if he had managed to change her mind to such an extent, to prove her wrong, then that meant he had proven himself wrong too. And if he could do that, then he could also carry this fear and move forward- he was strong enough to move forward.

The blood filled crystal was hot and heavy around his neck, not burning like before, but not comfortable either. He doubted it would ever be comfortable, that he'd ever be able seamlessly resonate with Maka's Anti-Magic Wavelength without any pain or consequence. Not with magic in his blood and Madness in his mind. Conflict was unavoidable and necessary; he couldn't turn his back on his origins and nature any more than he could reject his personhood. These things had to coexist inside him and the friction, too, was unavoidable. When Ragnarok woke up he would be unhappy about it, but that couldn't be helped. This was his choice, this was his burden, and the pain was manageable. He was, after all, used to pain. All that being said, the true test of his convictions came when he saw Lord Death, alone and facing his mirror, and the terror momentarily slipped free of his control.

He didn't have a weapon- why not? What did that mean? Then again, Lord Death was perfectly capable of harming him if not outright killing him without a weapon. Especially with his thorns suppressed. But no, no there wasn't a reason to do that here, to call for him like this only to turn on him and laugh at his continuing naïveté. This was a negotiation, not an execution. It wasn't an execution.

"How you doing," Lord Death spoke using his usual childlike tone, making what Crona had to assume was eye contact through the reflection. "Are you settling back in okay?"

"Y-yes sir," he stammered, instantly reduced to a child himself, gripping his arm across his chest and trying to hide how tight his ribs had become.

"Really?"

It was now that Lord Death turned to face him, at ease but maintaining the distance, for Crona's sake. And under the direct weight of the Reaper's gaze Crona wilted, letting out a heavy sigh through his nose. His instinct was to appease, to be agreeable in order to survive, and yet if he relied on instinct they'd get nowhere. The lack of a Death Scythe was an olive branch, a sign of trust, and a vote of confidence that Crona could move past his instincts. Ironically he couldn't disappoint, especially now.

"No. No I'm not okay," he whispered, still holding the contact like a wire. "Everywhere I go I can see what happened, not even in that place, just before, and I can't keep it out. I can't focus. Like right now I'm talking to you, but we're also having tea and I'm asking to go after Professor Stein and the wall is ripped out and the Kishin is running wild and I'm chained up in the dungeons while Pendra licks my face and I have to hold it all at once because if I panic my solution burns me. I'm afraid to go back and see Professor Stein and Miss Marie again. I don't want to face them after what I did."

"Now Crona, aren't you being a little harsh with yourself? Of course there are some things that you've done in recent memory that were, how shall we say it, not pre-approved, but no one blames you for what happened with Pendra. In fact, one could argue that you saved yourself from her before any real damage was done. One could also argue that you saved all of us from her and from your own power through your research. The means may have been questionable, yet the ends turned out to be quite desirable, wouldn't you say?"

"You don't have to try and make me feel better. It won't work anyway, nothing does."

"I understand how it must feel that way. So Crona, would you like to know something that very few individuals, and even fewer who remain among the living, know? I'll trust you with it, so we might better understand each other, but only if that is your wish."

Crona recoiled from the offer, curling inward as if to take a step backwards. His feet didn't follow through, so in the end he just sort of winced. Lord Death did not wince, or move, or do anything to indicate his consciousness still inhabited the body before Crona. How the two could ever understand one another was a mystery to him and the nature of any knowledge that might achieve that goal terrified him. Still, that was the crux of it, the bones of coexistence. To stay meant coexistence was necessary and to coexist was to understand at least a little and to understand he needed knowledge. A familiar hunger gurgled inside him, loud enough that Crona had to break eye contact so Lord Death wouldn't sense it. Gaze fixed to the edge of the platform, Crona nodded to express his consent. Again, Lord Death didn't move. His voice came from everywhere.

"I have Madness myself, a very powerful form called the Madness of Order. It overwhelms all that contact it, stripping them of everything, all sense of self and emotion, and leaves nothing but the predictable cycling of life and death. Your experiences are different, indeed each individual experience with Madness is so unique as to be incomparable, and yet I'm sure you'd empathize with the consumptive nature. I am its source and its keeper. Centuries have passed since I mastered my Madness, if fact I've quite forgotten how I achieved control at all, but I remember the struggle. I, too, have experienced hopelessness in the face of Madness. And I understand better than most that to overcome that hopelessness, sometimes extreme measures are needed."

As Lord Death spoke, Crona felt his insides pass through a deeply uncomfortable series of states. First they burned and the heat reduced them to liquid, thick and surging, so much so he thought he was going to be sick right there. Blood drained from his head to go investigate and set the liquid into a gelatinous mold of what it should've been, leaving him pale. Damp with sweat, wide eyes ice blue, and breath shallow. Never had he imagined such a thing; it was so outlandish it was almost beyond belief. Lord Death had no cause to lie about it either, and the dissonance made his vision darken for just a moment, though even that couldn't stop the onslaught of truth. By the end of it Crona felt hard and certain, emboldened. For a few seconds he let quiet fill the space between them, punctuated with his own sniffing noises as he tried to compose himself. When that failed he simply lifted his tear-streaked face and spoke that which he had come to say. Even though he couldn't stop the crying, his voice didn't shake.

"Everyone wants to help, I understand that much. Everyone just wants things to be like they were but I- I'm not like I was. There was never any going back for me, that's what I realized when I killed Pendra, there's no putting what's inside me back to sleep. Still I- I want to stay here, I want to be a member of Death Academy and hunt Kishin Eggs and stop hurting people. There's nowhere I belong by nature or by destiny, but this is where I would choose to be."

"That is my wish for you as well, Crona," said Lord Death, warmly, affectionately, just not so much as to overwhelm him. "It is my belief that you have great potential as a force for justice. However, I am sensing you have some conditions you would like me to hear."

"I do," replied Crona, swallowing hard and digging his fingers into his own arm, using the pain as a focusing point. "I have to continue my research. It's my compulsion, like order is yours, and if I don't feed it knowledge it will consume me. I am Lady Medusa's child; I can be more but I can't be different. Besides, my solution won't hold forever, it's not done yet. If you try and stop me I'll just go somewhere else and I don't want to leave. So you see, that's why- why I've decided that- that I can't be afraid of you anymore! If that's not okay then you need to kill me now, while I'm weak and can't fight back!"

"Oh Crona, I don't want to kill you. And I don't want your fear. I do, however, require your respect and your trust. After all, I have been around longer than you and there are things I know that you simply cannot. If you accept some of my conditions, I will allow you to continue your work. First, you must do so within the confines of this city. Second, for each project and series of experiments involving magic and/or Madness you will submit a proposal and risk assessment directly to me, and you will provide me with regular presentations of your progress. Finally, and most importantly, if at any time I tell you no, you may attempt to persuade me and in some instances I'm sure you'll be successful (you can be very determined when you want to), but in those cases where you are not you mustn't disobey. Now, does that sound amenable to you? Do I have your trust and your respect, child of Medusa?"

Lord Death's words felt like weighted beads that joined his solution around his neck, pulling him further and further down, chains made of sound and logic that simply did not blend smoothly with the magic and Madness that swelled to the surface to fight back. Again, childish was the right word, even so, Crona had hoped there would be no such constraints. Or maybe it wasn't Crona who had that hope; constraints would keep him in check and from hurting anyone, which was his desire. Other witches existed without boundaries and look what happened to them, at what they became. A horrible sinking feeling accompanied both that thought and the realization that Lord Death knew all about that. He'd used his mother's name, addressed him with an acknowledgement of all his potential. And he'd shared what was undoubtedly among his most carefully guarded secrets to show that there was compassion between them. Crona himself was among the innocents Lord Death wished to protect from the monster he could become. The magic and the Madness wanted to roam free, to create a world where there simply was no order, no rules or anything beyond hedonistic desires, a world where nothing lines up. They rejected Lord Death's conditions, but Crona could see their wisdom.

"Yes," he whispered, dropping both hands to his sides and exposing his vulnerability. "Yes, Lord Death, you have my respect and my trust. And… and you have my promise: I'll do as you ask, even when I don't want to, and I'll find a way to stay here. There's a way out there and I will find it."

"Then we are in agreement. Welcome to the DWMA, Crona Gorgon."

Echoes had accompanied him into the meeting and echoes followed him back down the stairs and through the Academy halls, footsteps and sighs intermixing into a hushed yet inescapable cacophony inside his head. Madness, magic, or just a mutant strain of good old-fashioned mental illness, anything felt possible. The echoes reminded him of his fear, the old demon in the darkness he'd been trying to escape for so long, in one way or another. First by becoming Kishin, then by becoming a DWMA student, and then a witch. Nothing had worked- nothing was going to work because there was no escaping fear. There is only forming a pact with the demon, and learning to live with it. Everything would calm down again once he settled; he believe that, believed that he would settle.

His meeting with Lord Death had given him hope enough to trust in such an absurd dream, that he was actually safe for the first time… maybe ever, protected by his own contract with the Reaper. The terms were clear, expectations set, and the order he'd tried to shrug off, the surrogate for Lady Medusa's control he'd both sought so desperately and tried to reject, had been restored. Conditions for his happiness finally given strict form. Maka and his friends didn't think such a thing was necessary for any person, had told him he hadn't needed externally enforced boundaries, yet Crona understood now more than ever before that he was more than a person. And the person couldn't control the more, not without scaffolding. He existed at the center of the Soul-Mind-Body Nexus, his power was between Magic, Madness, and Soul Resonance. It was there that he had to search for his solution- his permanent solution.

Maka's blood was uncomfortably warm around his neck, the phantoms in his memory so close to materializing in this reality. Crona felt if he lost focus even for a moment they would cross through time and his self would fragment into the million places he used to be. Even memories he'd thought lost to him, things he'd willed himself to ink out, were returning. Flickering ghost flames, indistinguishable from nightmare except through the validation of his victims. Maka's face, horrified and pale as she cowered against the wall, hands slick with Black Blood. Soul's glare that same moment as he pushed himself between them, red blood coursing from torn flesh, his and hers. The stain was still there- would still be there for a while yet. Pendra's viscous whispers thick between his ears, much like the goo of Madness that oozed all around and inside. Professor Stein and Miss Marie's hands, offered in help but identical to the arms of insanity and panic. Blood in the sand… so much blood…

Crona stopped just shy of the main hall, forcing the dissonance into abrupt silence. Outside it was midmorning, brilliantly sunny and hot. Bright. He wasn't ready for bright. When they'd returned from Pendra's cave he'd all but sleepwalked down to the dungeons, to his old room, curled up in the corner, and entered a sort of torpor. Like sleep, but more composed; the paralysis held him in a ball as the Black Blood put everything back where it was supposed to be and cleared the majority of the intoxicating magical proteins his own body had created. What everyone else had done was of no concern to him, though he assumed the infirmary was the first stop. After 24 h he, for lack of a better term, woke up, but was unable to will himself out of the room. So instead his friends had come to visit him, one at a time and not for too long as his tolerance for human interaction had apparently plummeted and he was easily overwhelmed. Maka stayed in the room next to him, her warmth transmitting through the wall, the constant calming sound of waves. She kept him a safe and after two more days he found he was more or less back to his old self. The plan was for him to finally return home after his meeting with Lord Death, and yet…

Turning his back on the day, Crona set forth once more, descending back down into the dungeons. There was no telling what drove him; he wanted to go be with Maka and Soul and have pasta more than ever before. Still, he found he also craved something that wasn't at their apartment. Solitude? Stagnation? Darkness? Punishment? These things his cell offered, that much was true, but it also made the memories more intense. His mind could expand into the darkness, the other Crona could take on a form. Why, then, was he going back? Why couldn't he just stick to the plan? It wasn't until he passed the door to his room that Crona realized that wasn't where he was going at all. And it wasn't until he saw the open door that he understood he wasn't the only one drawn there.

Recent movement had kicked up the dust, sending it into a lackadaisical dance in the pale shafts of light that were filtering through the repair scaffolding. The sun was on the other side of the school, not like before when it had blazed in from behind him, approaching dusk. No, now they were just past dawn and things were going to be okay. That's what he saw in the cool stone and mild light, in the splintered wood on the mend. Her face, though, didn't look so hopeful. There was sadness and anger in her features; that was the extent of what he could make out. Nevertheless, just being close to her made his solution a little less heavy and, even though this seemed an odd place to find her, he couldn't stop himself from smiling a tiny smile.

"Maka," he greeted softly, both trying not to startle her and knowing full well that she'd probably sensed him long before he knew she was there. "What are you doing here?"

"Huh? Sorry, I'm still just a little deaf," she feigned surprise anyway, lifting her head and turning to face him. "You're done sooner than I thought. Did it go well? You can tell me on the way home."

Briskly she moved forward, catching his hand and making as if to drag him behind her. Crona resisted, taken aback by her deflection and general presence in this room where nothing good had happened. Frowning just a little, he remained planted in the cell. Maka tugged on his fully extended arm a few times before turning and giving him a confused smile that looked artificial.

"What's wrong," she asked, voice light and cheerful.

"I'm sorry, you don't have to tell me, it's just I don't understand why you're avoiding my question. I don't understand why either of us came here, but I feel like it's important. This is where… where we fought, and it's where she took me. Why did you come back here?"

"Do we have to talk about this right now? Don't you want to get back and have dinner," Maka's voice seemed to quip, but with a sharper edge.

"No, we don't have to talk now," he answered, unmoved and concerned. "But I would like to."

Maka deflated, allowing her eyes to fall to the stone filled with blood around his neck, resigned. For a long moment there was just silence as she chewed her lower lip and searched for the best way to phrase whatever answer she had for him. When she spoke, her head and gaze dropped further.

"I've… been coming here a lot," she confessed. Crona maneuvered his long fingers so they interlaced with hers, pulling her a little closer and tilting his head encouragingly. "I couldn't really say why, I never thought anyone would ask, especially not you. If I had to, I guess it's because I'm… reminding myself of how I failed you and how awful it's been. So I don't do it again."

"You're… you're punishing yourself," Crona paraphrased, blinking. "I can understand that."

Her head jerked up, wide eyes meeting his for a second that Crona cut short. He moved fast, faster than he had since returning to the DWMA, untangling their hands and advancing on her. This time he did startle her, causing her to tense and take the smallest of steps away from him, more to center her balance than retreat. There was no need though, he just encircled her waist with both arms, pressing one hand between her shoulder blades and resting the other in the arch of her back. Gently he held their bodies together, applying just enough pressure that the compression was soothing but not so much as to cause his solution to bite into either of them.

"And now, for the first time, I also understand… why you're so sad whenever I punish myself. I know now why you ask me not to, why you wish I'd come talk to you instead. I'm sorry, Maka. I never meant to hurt you like this. I never wanted to do this to you."

"Crona," she started, stunned into a brief paralysis before both her body and her voice softened. "Don't be silly, you haven't done anything to me. You came back to me, that's all that matters."

"You're wrong; I've made you guilty. You were responsible for me and I sprayed you with the blood of my sins. Even now, I'm not strong enough to protect you and you feel you have to come here to atone. I've been so selfish, I didn't even notice."

"It's not-" Maka started, but she cut herself off, raking her teeth across her lower lip and rethinking. "This has all been a lot for everyone, especially you. I don't blame you, Crona, not even a little. And I'm not sad or angry because of you, I'm sad and angry for you. I don't want you to go through something like this ever again. So you are right that I come here to atone. Just for my sins, not yours."

She pushed him off, holding him at arms length and looking directly into his storm cloud eyes. Crona's features were still composed into a confused frown, his sharp chin tucked towards his chest uncertainly. Still, he looked at her with wonder, that same wonder that had glinted in his gaze ever since that first night in the bowels of the Academy. Like she was a paradox of sorts, something that could not exist and yet did. Breathing deeply, she steeled herself for the confession she should've made when this had all started.

"I have sins, Crona, mistakes that cut deeper than poor judgment, that have consequences I need to suffer for. I'm not a Saint or some pinnacle of purity that you've tainted, I'm just a person like you. There's no way to protect me from that. I love you, Crona, like I've never loved anyone or anything before in my life, and I wanted to be everything you think I am but I'm just not. I failed you, I made you believe you were alone and terrible things happened because of it. When you came back to me I thought I was going to die of happiness and that things would just go back to how they were. But they haven't and they won't and I just want you to be angry with me for that. I should've done better."

"I… I know. I understand that you're a person and I remember that you made me feel alone. It was like the sun had left with you, like I had only dreamed there was a sun then awoken a monster in a dark world," Crona whispered, dropping his eyes and addressing the ground morosely. Then he swallowed, hardening and bringing a hand up, pressing his palm to her cheek and meeting her glittering gaze. "I was angry with you, but I'm not anymore because you are everything I think you are. You keep saying I came back to you, yet you must understand you came back to me first. Much has changed, I won't deny that, and there are things that can never be like they were. I can't be like I was. Even so, I am still myself and I still love you. If there is something making you sad I wish you would believe that you can talk to me about it, that I will do my best to help you stop being sad and if I can't do that that I will stay with you until you're less sad. I wish you knew that you don't always have to be the strong one; I can be strong too."

Her lips parted as a million responses came to mind, rebuttals and confirmations and apologies and protests. None of them made it into sound, none of them was quite right. Nothing conveyed the extent of the strength she knew he had or the depth of her wish that he didn't need it or the contradiction of joyfully taking on his care while not wishing to become a burden to him. The right combination of words to tell him how effortlessly vulnerable she felt around him had become so tightly woven into her fear of his vulnerability, the anxiety of triggering his anxiety. So Crona continued in the silence, rubbing her cheekbone with his thumb tenderly.

"I know you're scared, of me or for me, it doesn't matter because in both cases I have made you scared. I wish I could tell you you don't have to be, that there's no reason to be afraid, but I don't want to lie to you anymore. I've been making promises today and already I'm scared I won't be able to keep them. They go against my nature, against my impulses, and for the first time I cannot allow myself to be motivated by the fear of consequences. You were right the last time we were here, I'm not normal and will never be normal. Still, within the confines of being Lady Medusa's child, someone whose blood is black, I will get close. Do you believe me?"

"Yes," she answered in a whisper, smiling a little at how instantaneous it had been.

"And do you also believe…" Crona swallowed hard, his eyes flicking away for just a moment and his body tensing. Maka covered his hand with hers, nuzzling into his palm encouragingly and bringing his gaze back to her. She liked the easy questions; she'd missed this simplicity between them. "Do you also believe that… that you're not my keeper. When you first brought me here, I recognize that I got to stay because you had faith in me, even though no one else did. I recognize that was necessary because I had done nothing to earn anyone's trust, because once I was trusted I betrayed everyone, because I was only starting to understand that there exists an objective morality outside of obedience. There's still so much I have to learn, so many things I don't understand. However, this much I do know: just as your sins are your burden mine belong to me. Back in the cave you said you'd be honest and critical and I need that, but I also need you to let me make mistakes sometimes and know that those consequences aren't your fault. Before that even, in the desert, you promised you wouldn't let me betray the DWMA again and I needed you to be my conscience because I didn't know differently; now I- I'm setting you free. Don't be sad anymore, not for me."

This, too, was easy for Maka to answer. Pulling his hand away from her face, she pressed her lips to his wrist, closing her eyes for a moment and enjoying the sensation of his pulse. His skin, warm and alive and here, against hers. Not in payment of a debt or for a sense of duty or expectation, just with her for the joy of being with her. With her by choice, even after she'd betrayed him, now with a full understanding of what that choice meant. Well, almost a full understanding.

"Yes Crona," she confirmed, speaking to the blood rushing through his veins. "I am not your keeper, not anymore, and I need to quit acting like it. I'm not responsible for your actions and feelings and you're not responsible for mine, so please don't think I'm trying to make you feel guilty, not even a little. Can I ask you a question now?"

"Me," Crona squeaked, sounding more startled and less dignified than he'd meant too. She nodded, opening her eyes just enough to peer through her lashes at him, and he nodded back, perplexed that she was, for lack of a better word, arguing with him.

"Does it make you sad when I'm sad, regardless of the reason?"

"Yes, and when you're happy I can be happy too. That's how it's been for a long time now."

"It's the same for me. There's no obligation or anything, that's just how it is when you love someone. If I stopped being sad for you that would mean I had stopped loving you and I reject that kind of freedom. Still, coming down here and kicking myself doesn't help anything, I do know better. I guess I'm just scared of the same thing: I don't want to cause problems for you, especially when you're dealing with so much. It's silly, isn't it? The two of us dancing around like the other's made of glass, like we're incapable of sharing our feelings. This is… hard for me, I'm not good with things that I can't just punch, so I have to learn too. Can you be patient with me?"

"Can I be-" Crona tried to repeat, but it came out a snort, after which he outright laughed.

"What's so funny," she chastised playfully, dropping his hand and pouting.

"It's just- you're asking me to be patient with you," he chortled, the giggles slipping through his fingers despite his efforts to contain them. "After everything? After… I… yes. Yes, I think I can deal with that. I think I can be patient."

"In that case, before we head back, could you do one last thing for me? Could you repeat what you said earlier?"

"Which part," he asked, containing his laughter but still smiling, tilting his head inquisitively.

"The part where…" Maka intentionally trailed off, moving in close to him and resting her arms on his shoulders so she could play with the hair at the nape of his neck, twisting it around her fingers. "Where you said you love me. Say it again?"

He didn't answer her with words, at least not initially. Leaning in and closing his eyes, he brushed a kiss over her lips, feather light like a bird's breath. Then he moved his hands to the arch of her spine, pressing her body firmly against his, molding his contours into hers and kissing her again. Harder, with all the certainty and confidence she'd always been able to sense hiding inside him, too timid to come out. Well it was out now and it made the hair on the back of her neck and all down her arms erect into goose bumps. Without meaning to she shivered, causing him to smile again and pull away just a little, just far enough for her to see the truth in his eyes as he spoke.

"I love you Maka. Nothing else matters, not who or what I am, I don't care about those things anymore. Nothing could make me leave except if you ask me. Even if you are too bright for someone like me. Even if I shouldn't be allowed near you."

Now it was her turn to close the space between them. Standing on her tiptoes and pulling his head forward, she brought his lips back to hers. But of course, she had to have the last word first:

"I decide that, and I love you too. I'll stay right here with you and I dare anyone to tell us otherwise."