Frozen Time
by: verveine

Disclaimer: I don't own Soul Eater or any characters in Soul Eater. I do own my own story though.

Chapter 1: Offer

Nothing was really worth it anymore, the white-haired boy decided, as he stood there nonchalantly with a grim look on his face.

Nothing.

"Hey, get off the intersection, you're going to seriously get hurt!" He heard a woman cry from her seat.

"Don't care," he replied back, not once looking up from his trance. Nothing was worth it, really.

"Well I care!" The woman snapped back. "If you die, you'll slow down the train."

"Aw, fuck you," Soul glared back. His velvety, scarlet eyes looked up at the woman in a menacing way.

She looked at him in absolute disgust, but said nothing back.

"Fuck my life," Soul sang in a rather dangerous tone of voice, as he crammed his broken hands inside the pockets of his leather jacket. The train rumbled as it made its course through the tracks, shaking vigorously, and threatening to take the life of the dull boy at any given moment. Just one slip, or an unexpected halt, and his life would be gone. Soul grinned a rather sick grin and looked up at the faces of horrified passengers through the small window. What would they know?

Those hands were everything to him; it was his life. He had spent years and years seasoning them to become a world-known pianist. He had dedicated all fifteen years of his life on the piano, playing since he was at the tiny age of two, and it all went down the drain in one single rainy night. He could still remember the voices of his horrified parents, the way their eyes filled with despair.

"What do you mean it's completely damaged? I don't care if the bones are shattered, find a way to fix him!"

"Do you know how much money those hands are worth? We need those hands!"

"He's nothing without his hands, nothing!"

"Fine then. We don't need him anymore."

They had abandoned him now- not physically, but mentally. He was worthless. They never really liked him in the first place, but this just nailed it. He was always an unwanted child, but they kept him because he had "talent."

Now he was just a burden.

He decided to be a good son until the end, and do them a favor by just killing himself. It was fine, nobody would miss him anyways.

The train took a steep turn, and everyone in the cart quickly got off. They no longer wanted to ride in a cart where a potential suicide was going to take place, especially since it was two in the morning.

He smirked, thinking how self-concerned people were. Nobody wanted to be a part of his psychological mess; nobody went out of their way to try to talk to him. Sadly, the one woman who dared to reach out to him was only doing it for her own benefit.

He closed his eyes, ready to free himself from the heavy binds of living when he heard a rather gentle voice speak.

"It's going to hurt you know," a rather melodic voice called out to him. He snapped his ruby eyes open, and they grew wider as he feasted upon a strange, transparent figure in front of him.

"W-Who are you?" He asked threateningly, his eyes never tearing off of her.

She looked like a girl, but her whole body was shaded a bluish tone. Her hair was let down messily, and all she had on was a simple white dress. The intersection between two carts of a train are extremely small, but somehow they both managed to fit. She was a skimpy girl and her hollow eyes looked straight at his own eyes.

"Are you really going to kill yourself? It's going to hurt you know," she repeated, looking at him with blank eyes.

"I fucking asked who the hell you were," he growled, not answering her question. "Who the fuck are you and where did you come from?"

The girl looked at him briefly, before looking down at the train tracks.

"I wish I knew that myself," she admitted, as she slowly started to close her eyes. "I think and I think, but I can't seem to remember anything about my past. The only thing I remember is my name, Maka Albarn. Nothing else."

Maka Albarn? Somehow that name sounded extremely familiar, and a wave of nostalgia hit Soul hard. But this girl...he had never met her before, he was sure of it. Only her name rang a bell in his head, everything else- her face, her voice, her body- were new to him.

His chain of thoughts were interrupted by her preppy voice.

"But if you're talking about what I am physically, I'm a ghost. A spirit of a dead girl," Maka told him rather cheerfully.

"What?" Soul spit out, his eyes narrowing at the sight of the girl. He had no idea why he sounded so taken aback, especially since he had already realized this when he saw that she was a soft white color and delineated in light shades of blue. Oh, and she was transparent.

"You heard me, I'm a ghost," she singsonged. "I'm not sure, but I think I died quite recently. I don't even know why I'm here, still existing in the human world. All I know is that when a person with a lot of regret and unsettled matters dies, they can't peacefully ascend to the afterlife and they become a spirit, a ghost..."

"So you're saying that you had a bad past, and you're a ghost because you want a happier ending?" Soul scoffed at the ridiculous theory of it all. "Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're kind of dead. There's only so much a dead person can do, you know?"

"Well, you're certainly taking this morbid topic a lot more better than I thought you would," she shrugged. "Actually, I wouldn't know how people usually react since most people can't hear or see me. I'm surprised you can...maybe there was a link between us. Do you remember me at all?"

"No," Soul lied, tightening the fists in his hands. The girl- ghost, whatever she was, was seriously annoying him. Why did she have to come now and bother him with her crazy stories when he was just about to end everything? How was this situation even possible? Ghosts and spiritual things only happened in movies or books, not in real life. Yet...the very existence of the girl in front of him threw all logical reasoning out the window.

Maka's eyes caught the shaking fist in his hand.

"I can fix that you know," she told him, her eyes looking directly at hands. He widened his eyes.

"What?" He growled, as he hid his hands inside his pocket in insecurity.

"Your hand, it's broken. You were a promising pianist, but because of an accident you can't ever play at the fast pace you used to, making you an incompetent player," she retold his life story flatly, as if she was reading it straight out of an index card. The sound of his past pouring out of her mouth got the better of him, and he found himself punching the figure in front of him. His hands went right through her, however, and there was a bone-crunching sound that confirmed his already tattered hands were now officially useless.

"You should control your temper," her high-pitched voice scolded him. He resisted the urge to try to punch her once again.

"My hands are none of your business," he snarled. "How do you even know about them?"

"For some reason, I know a lot about you, Soul Eater Evans," she admitted. "I have no clue at all about my past except my name, yet I know just about everything about you. It's weird, to say in the least."

"What, were you my stalker when you were alive or something?" He sarcastically mocked.

"Let's hope my tastes weren't that...drab," she insulted back, folding her hands against her chest. "The point is, Soul Evans, I want to make a deal with you."

"What deal?" He asked her, although he couldn't say he was interested in the least.

"Help me find out more about my past, and help me fulfill all the regrets I have left in this world. Lead me to a peaceful, happy afterlife. In return, I'll fix those hands of yours," she offered.

"You're a ghost, not God," he rolled his doubtful eyes. "How the hell are you planning on fixing them?"

"Wishes," she simply answered. "When a ghost leaves to the afterlife, the person who guided them there gets to have one wish of theirs fulfilled. Whatever they want the most in their heart- their strongest wish- will be granted to them."

Soul simply scoffed at the explanation. "So there is no concrete proof that you will be able to keep your end of the deal?"

"No," Maka instantly replied back. "But it's better to take a chance than to die in the most cowardly way possible- like you are doing now- without ever becoming a somebody, isn't it?"

Soul scoffed some more, but her words plagued his mind.

"How will I?" The white haired boy started cautiously, after five minutes of silence, trying to make himself sound as uninterested as possible. "How will I be able to do that? We have no leads on who you are whatsoever, it could takes us months, years even, to find someone who knows of your past."

"My name is a big part of who I was, I know that for sure," she said with a determined look on her face. A thin layer of silence fell upon them, before her voice boldly broke through it. "Please...please help me," she whispered softly, as her eyes drifted downwards to the train tracks. The cheeriness in her voice was gone now, and instead it was filled with sorrow and hurt.

"It hurts," she continued, as she grabbed onto her chest. "It hurts every time I try to remember. My heart hurts, as if it's telling me not to remember. That I don't want to remember. But how am I supposed to be free if I don't remember? I need someone to help me, I can't do this alone," Maka begged. "I can't do this alone."

Soul looked at her in disbelief and confusion. He tried hard to act as though he didn't care, but something in the girl's eyes were stirring up his emotions. They were filled with fear and panic and he, above all people, knew the true intensity of the feelings that were contained in those type of eyes. He had seen them numerous times before in a mirror- in his own reflection. He tried to repress the feeling of sympathy to the girl, but when her devastated eyes met with his hazy red ones, he heard his voice speak out before he could stop it.

"Fine, it's a deal. I find your past, and in return, you make sure that my hands will be fixed."

She looked up at him in shock, not believing that such a stubborn person would actually agree. Her melancholy expression faded away and instead, a wide grin spread across her small face.

"Thank you," she whispered out to him, as she touched the side of his face with her small hands. They felt cold and were completely lucid, but for some odd reason Soul felt his body warm up at her gentle touch.

Dying, he decided, would have to come another day.

A/N: Another long chapter story ._. I need to stop.

But this story has also been playing around in my head for a while, and the inspiration to actually write it down struck me today. Someone asked me why I was always killing off Soul, so this time I killed off Maka. C: ...Maybe that smiley is not really appropriate lol. I already know how I'll end this! Maka's past gets pretty complicated, but I know how it goes, so it's not going to take long to write (I think...I hope). Lol.

Please review! :x Because I kind of live off of them (overly exaggerated). No, but seriously, it really does make my day. xD