A/N: Hahhh, this was hard to write. It's probably gonna be hard to read too. Sorry.

Very special thanks to Marsh of Sleep and chaoticlivi for reading the thing and helping out with their opinions and pointers! Also thank you so much for your kind reviews, kind reviewers, they make my week.

Maka suggests no more shortcuts. She says she wants to see the house, even if it is in fragments. Even if it gives him a headache. He complies to her wishes. And she's asking so nicely, so genuinely interested, so well-meaning that every defensive barrier he raises comes with a pang of guilt.

Nonetheless, her request does not come easy. This is not the Black Room. This is a newly open-to-visitors area and he can't quite censor it well enough.

He's not at all sure how this is going to be partially, remotely, even a little bit okay. He hears her footsteps echoing his, feels the hint of her that's coming through smoothing over the bumps and cracks on the walls. He knows she's doing it without meaning to. The surroundings obey her. The moment she enters the picture, order must be somehow reinvented. The Black Room is always spotless when she steps foot in it and Oni disappears into the shadows only with the early signs of her upcoming arrival.

She completely ignores the fact that she's never been here before, that this is all new to her, undisclosed, and fighting to stay that way. She is not disgruntled by the fact that he can't manage to welcome her here, no matter how hard he tries. She steps carefully amongst the cliché secrets of his tortured, privileged childhood, her side of their link being all reassurance and calm and the endless mantra of 'it's okay, Soul, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay'.

He can feel her guilt at necessitating this venture into his dark places. He can feel his guilt at having barely contained urges to kick her out and just roar at her for letting wood sprites and other ancient shit tap into his consciousness and read information about him that he isn't sure he has even dealt with.

She walks by his side always, much smaller than him yet so much stronger in here, always ready to fight off sudden asshole visualizations of his parents, standing in a corner of a hallway, gesturing while on the phone, never turning to look their way. She confidently gallops ahead and slices the air with her arms as if whirling cigarette smoke out an open window. This makes the room they're in tint and shine in her colors and he feels an ease that is little by little diminished by the time passing .

Her inevitable curiosity gets the best of her as sealed treasure chests, video game influences bleeding into him, appear at their feet.

She approaches locked places which unlock with a click the moment she wonders what they're hiding. He can't tell if that's him blindly and without fail obeying the meister or if it's the meister herself, cheating a little and stepping on him for a second.

She yelps in surprise as he pulls her back close to him, apologetic and pleading with her to just keep walking till they reach the piano room.

"Stay close. Don't touch anything," he says, to make sure he's officially worded his plea.

She looks around sheepishly. "There's nothing to touch," she starts, but then meets his eyes. "Sorry."

There really is nothing around them now but that's because he threw them into darkness the moment she closed in on family memorabilia and Christmas cards and electricity bills that inexplicably still stain this obscure part of his memory.

He's not sure he can keep dealing with her whole complete human existence in here for much longer. She needs to just follow till they get to their goddamn destination and she can just marvel at the shitstorm that is his current feelings when the door is unwillingly, grudgingly opened.

At this point, more than keeping an eye on Maka, he's tired of fighting against his own self. With every step, they leave behind safer territory. He's feeling increasingly schizophrenic as he tries to divide his mind to what he's allowing to be visible and what should never ever be seen by his partner.

Wes comes to say hi, the moment he thinks that. He's not sure Maka can see him. His brother drapes and arm across his shoulders, always taller than he is, no matter how many infinite inches Soul grows. He walks on the other side of him, silent, even a little supporting.

He's already made this path way longer than it in fact is and he can't decide whether he wants to end their little journey here and just open the door that's been at arm's length for the eighty-three millennia they've been in here. Still, he's grateful that the Wes of his mind isn't throwing piano sheets at him, shouting about giving up and telling him to stop being a fucking wimp. Instead his hand is welcome, weirdly.

He decides to not let his brother's ghost see him falter in fear of his own memories. He'll see this to the end. He takes a sharp turn right into the wall. Maka follows, warily. Wes doesn't. He says goodbye and promises to maybe try to call him when all this is over. No promises.

They emerge through the wall into what seems a completely identical room to the one they just were in.

He hears her voice vaguely, 'everything is okay' once more, and then she gives him full control of their link till it's all him. She keeps a little bit to herself though, the small percentage her grigori soul needs to steady him and never lose contact with his skin, no matter what.

He takes in mouthfuls of virtual air and starts to shiver a little. Then he starts to shiver a lot. He curses everything and tries to focus his thoughts to coming up with as many swear words as he can. That will keep him sane.

He makes her slip, in his newfound power, without meaning to. He can't believe his unconscious is trying to harm her, he can't believe that there's still parts of himself that don't house any kind of reminder that she exists. Time in here is irrelevant and he forgets her, he forgets he's a weapon, he forgets he's his meister, his partner, his roommate, his Maka.

He has moments, infinite moments when he doesn't really know who the girl that's following him so damn persistently is. Moments when his body is the correct size in relation to his surroundings. Embarrassing, despairing, exhilarating moments when he recognizes her for who she is, Maka 'Legs' Albarn, daughter of Spirit Albarn, not very proud of that fact though secretly very much so. Dork, bookworm, feeder of cat, impossibly strong-willed and the biggest idiot he's ever known, aggravatingly attractive, especially after a fight, disheveled and smiling brightly in the face of victory.

These assorted feelings make him want to just stop trying and get the hell out from this shit expedition he's shoved them into and go back to the hotel, back to his home continent, back home, to familiar Death City, familiar blazing heat that makes him question his sanity every time he has to go under the sun but that is so much better that this. He wants worries like missing a day in their alternating cooking duty on weekdays, wants to argue about who carries the toilet paper all the way from the store to the apartment. Who has to touch the raw meat before cooking it.

He grunts in his effort to stop feeling so damn helpless. When he's not drowning in sorrow because his mom got rid of his favorite toy, he feels like he's pulled back into the first years of his meister-weapon partnership, when Maka spent whole days silent and scrutinizing, distrusting and lurking around him, trying to witness the exact moment when he would, inevitably, betray her.

Her lasting silence is a curse tailored specifically for Soul Eater Evans and he wants her back inside his brain, he doesn't want to think anymore. Yet, he's pressing on because they will fall apart if he doesn't show her why she needs to never ever ever trust anyone but him and why no tree spirit, nothing, no one can even fill the space inside of her that he's spent all these years reserving just for himself.

Can't she understand that he aches for constant acknowledgements that she's okay and that she's okay with what he's thinking and she's okay with not seeing where her feet land?

The black blood does not exist in here, chronologically, but he craves its familiar insanity, the limited actions that follow its appearance, the resignation that lies in the black blood's insanity, the liberating black-out of letting go, feeling unable to do anything, let alone claw for sanity, knowing that his coming back to the world of the sane is Maka's natural and celebrated property. Her responsibility, not his.

He grabs her by the shirt in an effort to also grab on to some of the soberness that she's radiating. "Keep close, now," he tells her, just for the sake of speaking to her.

You remember this shirt. It was a gift for you, for your 18th, you laughed and hugged her and accused her of only buying you gifts that she can also use and she got angry but not really. It's blue and gray, blue and gray, blue and gray, it's cotton blend, it might shrink in the wash if you're not careful, you took out a coffee stain from it, using dish soap and then Maka complained about it smelling weird.

"You okay?" she asks.

She wears it more often than you do, her smells lingers on it. It lingers on most of your clothes, on the rare occasion that she has settled for her own and you have dibs on your forgotten hoodies and t-shirts.

You remember her smell. The smells in here don't exist anymore, you can't really smell hand sanitizer and the sickening rose-scented floor cleaning agent are only in your head. She is here, she is real, she is your now, concentrate, don't push her out.

"Soul!" Maka says and smacks him on the head.

"Where are you," he asks, blindly. "Can you hear me," oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. "Can you hear my th-" His vision abruptly focuses on her stupid hair and the non-Evans colour of it is oxygen to his lungs.

The world comes into focus and he turns to her too fast, too sharp, the glint in his eyes impossible in such low lighting. He follows the curve of her outstretched arm, the hoodie disappearing as his stare inspects her elbow. She takes no notice of this or at least he doesn't hear any indication that she does. Then again he's not sure there is any opening for her voice to sneak into the clusterfuck that is his brain right now.

He takes hold of her forearm and focuses on the little blond hairs standing up. His moment of lucidness is too embarrassing as he realizes that Maka can hear him freaking out over hardwood floors amongst other, possibly wimpier, things. On her face he finds a blatant deliberately arranged expression.

He forgets his valid reasons to die right here and now and instead looks into her eyes, hoping that the entirety of her has carried over to his side of the world, no, to his brain, this is not the real world. He looks for the golden speckles in her iris that he knows should be there, he has the positions memorized. He counts one, two, three, five in the left eye, two in the right one, missing the third one.

He brings his face closer, hoping that their proximity will help him ensure that she's her, really, separate from him, her own person. He feels her familiar touch on his neck, where she's brought both of her hands. She raises herself on tiptoe and her gaze never falters.

"I can hear you counting," he hears her voice from afar.

He inches closer and forgets about the remaining spot of gold as he feels the whirlpool around them die down. Her touch is soothing, even in here. He longs for her smell and wonders what it would feel like if she could touch every bit of his skin.

"You've never tried, have you," her voice sounds again, buzzing in his ear. For good measure, he replays his visuals from the past two seconds. Maka's mouth hasn't moved.

Her eyes widen at something behind him and he catches up with the situation two beats too late. He slowly turns to look at what she's gaping at and, horrified, finds what he expects. There's a replica of her, never as radiant as she is, not convincing for a second, but the clone is taking off its clothes and he can't reach it fast enough to shut it down and bang spontaneously formed doors in its face.

So he severs his contact with Maka and they're thrown off the resonance. He feels like he's just taken a slap in the face but he also feels so liberated now that he's not the creator of the world he and Maka are in. Reality becomes equally nerve wracking, though, when the triumphant fog clears and he remembers why they're not resonating. He cautiously looks her way only to see her getting swiftly off the ground, dusting her knees and striding to where he's fallen. She roots the heels of her boots in the earth and hauls him up.

"It's okay," she says and holds him by the wrists. "Deal with that later, it's okay." He can't see her eyes. He decides to trust her voice with his last hope to save some face by not being a coward and giving up now.

He looks at his heavy feet one last time before he wills them both back into his consciousness, this time right in front of the door he needs to unlock. He looks to Maka once more, hoping that she's thought of a magical solution and they don't have to do this after all. She looks back at him, expectant and a little stiff. He can't blame her.

She blocks him when he tries to pry into what exactly she's thinking and gives him a reprimanding stare.

"Don't stall," she says.

He fishes the key out of his pocket and fits it into the lock. It turns easily and the door opens with a click. He peeks into the room. He knows he'll have to step in to know if she's here or not.

He has more control over things, though, now that they took a break. Even if it becomes the catalyst for his imminent death. By book. On the brain. At least he hopes it's not a book on Scottish lore. Or self-inflicted.

He closes the door behind them and waits.

A/N: Please tell me what you think, it really does help. The things you say remind me what I might be doing wrong and what I like about this story. They make me want to continue and do my best.