Work Text:
Kishin soul number thirty-seven.
Her hands are wrecked; Soul can feel the blood against his metal. He’s tired, Maka’s exhausted. Her left boot is falling apart. She will definitely have two black eyes in the morning, and one very-shredded nose. He will have road rash up his right side. He will taste blood, when he transforms back to a regular human being.
“Look for a window.”
She can be just as demanding as she is exasperated. Soul does not question, only does.
He feels how cold the air is this time of night, not because he’s transformed to normal, but because he can feel the air chilling the metal of him, blade and all, in contrast to Maka’s hands, as they walk down streets they’ve torn asunder in the struggle. Maka trips on a segment of cobblestone that isn’t quite flat. It takes her a good, very good few moments to collect herself upright and continue. Soul doesn’t quite have enough energy to transform back to normal without collapsing like a newborn calf. He stays put.
She leads them back to one of the main streets, ones with stores, with windows and places to draw out the seven numbers she’s had memorized since she was five years old. Soul knows that she’s stumbling not only because he can hear her footsteps, slapping around and haphazard, but because he feels her trying to get a grip on him for balance, making him sit slightly askance more often than not in her hot hands.
Maka trips to the first window they find; ends up throwing Soul forward to catch her fall and smashing a nice, large hole in the glass, rendering it absolutely useless. She groans, and Soul’s glowing with white-blue light, to signal he’s going to switch back and help her out, but Maka denies him.
“Next door has a window, too.”
“Keep a hand against the wall while you walk.” Soul advises. Maka listens.
She scrapes him a little bit against the ground, which feels like dragging the tops of your feet against concrete, if Soul had to put a feeling to it. Not that it’s painful, but it’s not exactly comfortable. He doesn’t bitch—he normally would, probably throw in a lazy ass-related joke, but he’s too tired to think of something and Maka’s past the point of caring.
She holds herself up as she breathes on the window. The fog instantly forms; she doesn’t even need to put effort into that part. But her gloves, shredded as they may be, are stuck to the raw, open bits of scrapes of her palms. She tries taking them off with her teeth, but she’s so tired. Soul watches from his red-black blade as she tears up—not because she’s upset, but because she’s tired, and something as simple as removing her gloves is legitimately too much to handle, on top of getting thrown about three stories down (face first) into the fucking pavement.
“Chill,” Soul mumbles, and Maka does. She slouches; she holds herself fully up against the wall and moves Soul on her shoulder, so he can reach the window she had been trying to work with.
It takes a nice bit of effort on Soul’s part, but he manages a half-transformation from his blade, human limbs sprouting like branches from the staff of his scythe form. It’s freezing out here, he realizes, absolutely ball-fucking-shriving cold, and he realizes Maka’s fingers are probably numb (especially from holding him—talk about a guilt trip) and not the best for writing with.
He puffs on the window, writes out the numbers and waits, waits, waits for it to go through. He’s greeted with joy that almost-instantly turns into utmost concern, something Soul is honestly surprised to hear from Shinigami-Sama.
Soul explains that, yes, Maka is holding him up, that’s her shoulder and her hair, but it was a rough one, so he’s taking responsibility to report in. He can hear Maka’s dad yelling, mostly a mantra of his daughter’s name in thousands of wails that don’t ever cease being the epitome of annoying. Shinigami-Sama nods, nods, nods, and thanks Soul for not letting them worry until tomorrow about their status, and wishes them a safe trip back home. The window dings back to black, a looking glass into a shop of pastries and other such treats. Soul thinks about someone creating a pastry to represent something akin to the taste of a Kishin soul, and finds himself drooling a little bit.
Soul decides he’ll be able to transform without dropping to the ground, and does such. Maka turns to give him a little look, and because Soul knows her so incredibly well; he can tell it’s a look of surprise her tired, beaten-up face is giving him.
“Here, come on.” He turns his back to her, arms making hoops on either side of him as he hunches down. She doesn’t get on his back right away, and Soul gives her shin a little kick with the back of his shoe. Maka carefully climbs onto his back, hesitant in all the ways that make Soul worry, and he actually has to tell her to put her arms around his neck to avoid falling.
It’s a long shuffle back to the apartment, but it’s worth every stumble and curse as Soul gets the door open to the apartment. It’s warm inside, familiar, and he can feel Maka perking up a little bit, seeming a little less ready to croak on his back. That’s always a nice thing.
Neither changes into pajamas; Soul doesn’t even take off his shoes before he goes to bed. He just guides Maka by hands on her shoulders to her room, puts a box of tissues on her nightstand (for that nasty spill that managed not to break her nose, but definitely fuck her face up royally) and takes the pigtails out of her hair, mostly because they’re uneven as shit and it bothers him a little. She toes off her boots by herself, mumbles something about “money” and “new soles” before she rolls over onto her side and finally (“promptly” is a better word) gets to rest.
Soul makes sure she’s fine before flicking the light off, shuffling into the darkness of his own room to drop down on his bed face-first. He doesn’t even pull the covers over himself; he doesn’t have the energy or a single care to do such, and simply ends up falling asleep like a board of wood sitting askance on the edge of the workbench.
That was only Kishin soul number thirty-seven.
Out of one hundred, total.