So, Soul Eater is pretty much perfect. There isn't a character I don't like in that entire damned show, and I've got fic ideas coming out of orifices I wasn't aware I had.

I want more. I neeeeeeed more. Gimme.

DOI.

This story happened after a HORRIFYING BRAIN INJURY. Flame the head trauma if you take issue with any of the events/characterizations/tense-problems in this fic.

That is all.

She's all grown up now; slender and lithe where she had been thin and lanky. Her face, appealingly tan from her travels, dons a wide, open grin. Even as he appraises her, he's scrutinizing the still-darker young man at her elbow, laughing at some shared, private joke.

Soul's heart leaps up into his throat.

He doesn't possess the capability –like she does—to detect the minutiae of soul wavelengths, but he can tell from the way they stand together that this foreign male is her new weapon.

Across the room, Shinigami-sama beckons him forward, and he moves in the direction of his meister automatically, though his eyes never stray from the ash-blonde, emerald-eyed girl at the center of the room, who doesn't appear to realize he's even there. His mind boggles at this notion; their souls had once been inextricably intertwined -a bond he's always imagined would be -at least in a vestigial sense- permanent, unbreakable. He'd lived and breathed for her once, wanting the status of Death Scythe as much for his own prestige as for her single-minded determination to make him great. Even now, years after he'd been passed unto the care of Death, he'd been able to sense her before she even walked into the room, had felt the irresistible pull of her uniquely brilliant soul energy, reaching with invisible fingers and wrapping around him like the warmth of a blanket.

She hasn't so much as glanced in his direction, hasn't given so much as a furrowed brow to indicate she might feel him on some residual, subconscious level. She resonates with someone else these days; she is –quite literally—on an entirely different wavelength.

And then it happens: Maka disentangles herself from the taller man at her side and makes as if to flounce away, perhaps to mingle, perhaps to make a plate of food for herself (and, his stomach clenching at the thought, perhaps a plate for her companion, too), when the weapon deftly catches her wrist as she turns and pulls her into a brief embrace, punctuated by her startled laughter and culminating in his lips meeting hers.

Soul stops in his tracks and feels the long-dormant darkness in his blood thrum blackly. He's dimly aware of the poppy number playing in the background abruptly shivering into a velvety jazz arrangement, and that vague, faraway sound in his mind might be a (once-familiar?) nefarious snigger…

Maka isn't pulling away; if anything, she pushes herself closer, her hands unabashedly posited on a pin-striped chest, the hands of The Other firmly, cozily content at the base of her spine, just shy of impropriety. The Maka of Old would not have allowed such a blatantly undecorous display in mixed company; his Maka had commanded respect, had balked or shied away from such...exhibitionism.

Soul doesn't feel his hands clenching into fists, only dimly aware of himself as he starts toward the pair, stride caught somewhere between tentative and determined. If Shinigami-sama's still attempting to flag him down, Soul is deaf to his summons.

He arrives just in time for them to break away from each other to the gut-churning sound of Maka's contented sigh. He grits his teeth and waits for her to slip out of the Other weapon's hold so he can make a quick sweep for the guy's jugular with his forearm. Or what would be his forearm, after he's traded blade for flesh and bone again.

When she –at long last—pulls away and turns, however, it's in his direction, placing her firmly (and inconveniently) between him and his target. He freezes.

She blinks once, twice, cocking her head neatly to one side. How long has it been, he wonders (achingly), since he's been the sole focus of those green, green eyes? How long has it been since she'd smacked him in the head with a book for being particularly obtuse, how long since she'd casually pillowed her head on his lap on the couch and fallen asleep after a long, trying day of lessons and the terror of newly-liberated, morbidly powerful Kishin and the unwitting betrayal of cherished friends and the inept attempts of a father-turned-Death Scythe to make up for his chronic short-comings? How long, how long, how long has it been since she'd stumbled into his room late-late that one evening and traced the length of his scar from base to apex, silently crying and whisperingly promising never to allow such a thing ever to happen again while he pretended to be asleep and willfully resisted the impulse to pull her into bed with him and hold her close—

"Do I know you?" His arm falls numbly to his side and he stares at her in dumb shock. Even if he's grown up, filled out, changed, become a card-carrying member of the Cool Elite; even if it's been years since their souls had occupied the same space, is it possible that she coud have forgotten him?

The jazz begins skipping cacophonously; he feels hot, he feels small, he feels a little crazy. After another dark, dangerous moment passes between them and Maka's eyes still refuse to show even a glimmer of recognition, he finds a quiet chuckle bubbling up out of him, eventually spilling over into full-blown maniacal laughter. (The sound of his mirth is sinister and…and somehow different from how he's used to hearing himself sound.)

What the hell does he care if this little girl remembers him or not? She isn't his meister anymore, she'd clearly abandoned him, discarded him, forgotten him, and clearly their brief episode together growing up meant nothing.

He's powerful, so powerful now; she's served her purpose, brought him to his full potential, surrendered him to someone worthy of wielding him. Now no one can touch him; now he's an instrument of Death –literally as well as figuratively—and he is altogether impervious to the perforations she may have left in other, lesser beings' souls, where once she might have been the binding element holding them together.

The simple, hysterical truth is that he doesn't care about her. He never had. She'd been a means to an end, and he doesn't care if she lives or dies. In fact, now that it's crossed his mind, he doesn't think anyone'd worry themselves overmuch if she happened to drop dead here on the spot, or if he strikes out against her. Perhaps this is the perfect opportunity to show her just how easily he can let go of her, how quickly he can forget she ever existed at all…

He moves before he's really even fully thought it through, his arms arcing through the air in practiced parabolic perfection; the symmetry would have made Kid proud.

No sooner does Maka's face split into horrified surprise than her new weapon has appeared before her, a sibilant whisper heralding the man's presence the instant before he collides with the curved red-on-black blade of—

What? His mind screams, suddenly terribly conscious of the figure before him, taller and older and somehow not a stranger, with a shock of platinum crowning his head and a fierce, protective intensity burning in his claret-crimson eyes…

"Soul!" Comes Maka's anxious tenor from behind her weapon, tiny hands alighting on the Other's shoulder even as the lethal weapon keeps its focus on him, even as his eyes drop to focus on his hands, which (he discovers, to his horror) are proportionally wrong and tiny and taloned and red. Shocked, terrified, disbelieving, he skims one sickly-smooth hand across his face, finding it too round and too slick and curiously, impossibly adorned by a pair of twisted, spiral-divoted horns-

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"Soul! Soul, are you okay? SOUL!"

He snaps awake with a jolt, rocketing jarringly to one side and reeling as his whole world tilts and spins violently in the instant before he smacks into something cold and hard.

"Soul! Black Star, get the nurse!" There are warm hands at his shoulder and against his hip, the pressure of shifting weight, the residual horror of a nightmare—"Soul! Soul, can you hear me? It's Maka, please say something!" And that voice, that wonderfully familiar, sweetly concerned voice, saying his name, identifying him, recognizing him, substantiating him.

"Maka…" He manages, weakly, belatedly realizing he'd fallen from his bed to the floor. In the infirmary.

Naked but for his boxers and the fresh gauze around his lower abdomen and left arm, he becomes gradually conscious of just how frigid the floor beneath him is, but attempting to sit up to escape the frozen linoleum turns out to be a Bad Idea; almost before he's even moved, he's wincing and falling backward -painfully- as he aggravates injuries he doesn't fully remember receiving.

"So uncool…" He's startled by the resonance of soft, grave laughter and cautiously cracks his eyes open to peer up at his meister, hunched over him with unshed tears sparkling in her too-bright eyes.

"You're an idiot, Soul. One of these days you're going to realize that as partners, we're in this together. Let me take the hit with you, you moron." He doesn't tell her that the thought of her cut up and in agony makes him want to die. He doesn't intimate his relief at hearing her call him 'partner,' doesn't mention the horrifying dream he'd just had about having lost her forever, about the madness buried (not-so-)deeply within having convinced him to bring her harm –even in a subconscious, make-believe world that would never -could never- be. He doesn't share with her the bewildering dichotomy of his two dream-selves, the one scorned, forgotten, possessive, and blindingly powerful; the other still imperfect, but effortlessly close with her, clearly besotted, and wholly unwilling to let any harm come to her. He isn't sure how to reconcile these two conflicting personas, and vaguely disconcerted that the common element in both equations seems to be her.

"How totally uncool would it be for a guy not to stick up for a girl?" He grins mischievously up at her. "You're such frail creatures…"

Ah, and there's his much beloved Maka-Chop…

"Soul…" He slips back easily into his routine of ignoring the way his soul flares at the slightest emotion in her voice. "Baka…" She slumps over him, enveloping him, and he lets out a breath he hadn't been aware he'd been holding in when her forehead comes to rest lightly against the juncture of his collarbone and chest. The warmth of her breath fans over his (yet-sensitive) skin, and spots of moisture drop (one, two, three) against his pec, and (very much intentionally,) he reaches toward her with his free hand, weakly resting it against the back of her head.

Effortless. Comfortable. Necessary.

This is peace, he reflects, and more importantly, this's reality. He'd resolved not to turn into the destitute, bitter creature that bastard-imp seems so eager for him to become. And if the way to power means separation from Maka –in any capacity—then he doesn't want it.

Of course, whatever hold the imp may or may not have over him, his meister was another story altogether. His Maka's an unstoppable force of nature, a creature of light, warmth, and compassion, a girl of vibrant, powerful wrath; his partner, his friend, his, for as long as she'll have him.

When he drifts helplessly back to sleep, it is dreamless, restful; when he wakes the next morning, he will find Maka snoring softly at his bedside, her hand wrapped delicately around his.

BEHOLD as I wrap up my first (terrifying) attempt to write Soul Eater fiction by means of DEUS EX MACHINA!

(Dream sequences make me squick and here I am writing one. Fricklewinkies.)

I'll get a handle on these characters eventually.

Until then, people, we need MORE fandom love for this fantastic show/manga.

Damn it.

I'm off to the cheez-it-and-hummus outlet.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!