Chapter Text
Every face seems fresh and new at the start of the new year at the Death Weapon Meister Academy. The incoming freshman class is as diverse a mix as always, and there are plenty of rumors about the newcomers- like, did you hear that a pair of eleven year old twins were admitted this year? Or I heard that Lord Death’s daughter is set to attend the academy this year- did you even know that Death the Kidd had siblings?
In a school for especially gifted kids- kids with the power to turn into weapons, or to see souls, or that have the drive and desire to learn how to wield one of those human weapons- these are normal rumors. There’s always news to be spread, there’s always gossip concerning whose rich parents are sending their deadbeat son here, or which kids seem to pick the most fights, or who’s starting to separate themselves from the pack as the smartest, the fastest, the strongest.
But this year would prove to be the farthest from normal that the DWMA had ever seen.
It begins with a rumor.
---
Aliyah doesn't cry.
It's what unnerves her rivals, her classmates, her opponents, and many more.
Normal people cry when they sustain an injury.
Normal people cry when they talk about the death of someone close to them.
Normal people cry when they get emotional.
Pretty early on, it becomes obvious that Aliyah is anything but normal.
She certainly looks normal. Short brown hair, yellow eyes, on the tall side of average height- there’s nothing outstanding about her features. It’s easy to look past her in a class full of flashy students that all hope to stand out.
Aliyah Faulkner just… doesn't cry.
Her classmates watch as she spars with a weapon, and they collectively flinch when the hand twisted behind her back gives a startlingly loud pop of protest.
The teacher refereeing the match calls it and runs to Aliyah, but all Aliyah does is stand there.
She stands quietly, examining crooked fingers with her head tilted, lips pursed.
She's not unfeeling or emotionless- a classmate asks her later if it hurt, and she nods with a wry smile as she rubs the splint taped onto her sprained fingers.
She just... doesn’t cry.
It only takes a couple weeks of academic and physical testing for a pattern to emerge in the freshman class scores. Aliyah is consistently among the top students in both categories- and interest towards the normal looking girl begins to grow.
All DWMA students aim to find their first partner, to find their meister, or their weapon. Eventually, after years of training, they’ll engage in combat against the monsters of their world as a team, all in the hopes of defending their fellow man from the horrors of a kishin attack. Or worse.
Aliyah is a meister, a specific brand of student dedicated to learning the trade of a weapon. She's weaponless, though. Unpartnered. Solitary.
And the more the people around her notice her achievements, the more people begin to approach her.
She receives many requests to partner up from many first-year weapons that are also searching for a partner, all hoping to latch onto someone strong at the start.
Most of them she turns down as soon as they ask. Others are lucky enough to be challenged to spar with her, and a select few even make it into her hand in their weapon forms. She considers each prospective partner, weighing them in her hands, testing the rate of their subconscious resonation.
To most of the students approaching her on the basis of partnership, she says no.
Except for Cadence.
To Cadence, she says yes.
Cadence Pasolini is one of those kids who stood out right off the bat at the beginning of the new school year. He’s a multi-form weapon, a weapon with more than one form he can transform into- in Cadence's case, a sword or a scythe, two close-range weapons.
What made Cadence stand out so quickly was how quickly became clear he had no conscious control over which form he’d end up transforming into. On top of that, he’s friends with the infamous Soul Eater Evans- and according to the latest gossip, they knew each other as kids.
Not to mention, he’s tall, strong, and has an easy smile that makes him popular with the ladies.
Aliyah almost turned him down just for that last one, but the sincerity of his request to partner with her made her think again.
She likes his genuine excitement, likes the way he clearly thought through every step before he ever approached her. She likes the way they subconsciously resonate as soon as the steel of his weapon form (a scythe, this time) lands in the palm of her hand. She likes the challenge that wielding him and his unpredictable forms poses. She likes the way they fit together without question, without her even noticing.
She decides to take Cadence on as her weapon partner, and that's the end of that.
---
Cadence is friendly, level-headed, and careful to put thought into every action he takes. It quickly becomes clear that he is Aliyah’s total opposite.
The most noticeable example of their opposing personalities is that… Cadence has friends. A group of them, in fact. Aliyah is a loner, content to skirt the edges of crowds and friend groups and keep to herself.
Everyone knows that Cadence is friends with Soul Eater Evans. By default, that puts him in communication with the upper level EAT class kids, which makes him the envy of their freshman class. But Cadence makes friends easily and quickly, so he adds first-years- faces that are familiar to Aliyah- to the mix without breaking a sweat.
The first of those familiar faces is Jason Blackmore, a guy who keeps his headphones in and his mouth shut.
He’s not quiet like Aliyah- Aliyah is quiet because she has nothing to say, because she’s busy watching other people and collecting information. Jason is quiet in a moody, sullen way, something that screams rebellion.
At first glance, Aliyah pegs him as a slacker, effectively dismissing him- but Cadence scoops him up like a newfound treasure and excitedly babbles to her about the new addition to his growing basketball team.
Now that they're partnered, Aliyah is almost constantly surrounded by Cadence’s friends, both from the NOT and the EAT class. Truthfully, she doesn’t understand how Cadence manages to navigate people as well as he does. In theory, she could learn by watching him, but she doesn't think she'll ever reach his level of expertise.
Whether by watching and learning from Cadence or just by her own natural gravity, Aliyah does manage to meet people on her own.
Shiro Kouri is the first friend Aliyah makes outside of Cadence’s influence.
He’s a lot like her in respects to rumors- meaning that there aren't many to be found, since he isn’t incredibly unusual, appearance-wise.
Tall, blonde, and broad-shouldered, Shiro looked more like he fit into the Dumb Jock category than the Studious Nerd- save any stereotypes about the glasses perpetually sliding down his nose. Regardless, a couple weeks of academia was all it took to put him in the running for one of the top spots among the new wave of students, negating any dumb jock stereotypes that might’ve been thrust upon him.
Along with proving himself as one of the incoming class' top students, like Aliyah, Shiro was a meister. And as one of the incoming class' top students- especially as a student constantly pushing himself to grow stronger, get better- Shiro had approached Aliyah on the grounds that many in their year had tried before: to teach him what she knew.
To all of the students that approach her for tutoring, she says no.
Shiro had asked only once- very respectfully, as was his nature- and had very politely backed off after her uninterested refusal.
(The students that don’t back off after their initial rejection receive only silence in response to further questioning.)
When Cadence asks why she won’t tutor anyone, he finds that she isn't used to people asking her for help. Especially not with such… honesty. She also isn’t used to interactions that don’t benefit her- because when they don’t benefit her… she usually gets hurt in return.
(That confession… kind of concerns him.)
Furthermore, she admits she isn’t used to people handling rejection as well as Shiro had.
Shiro had… surprised her. But she'd still said no.
And that had been the end of it.
Until Layla.
---
Layla Lemay is… a firecracker, to put it in simple terms. On the first day of school, she’d introduced herself to everyone individually as a weapon- a pistol, to be precise- that was looking for a meister.
(All Aliyah had to do was shake hands with Layla to know that they weren’t a good match for each other.)
Everyone knows Layla. And Layla seems to know everyone in return.
Though she didn’t shine in academics, she quickly proved herself as one of the best students in technical studies- the studies of meister and weapon technique. As it turned out, Layla was innately perceptive, possessing a unique soul sensing skill even though she was a weapon, and could pick up on emotions just by being near somebody. It made her incredible at resonating with partners, since she barely had to put any effort into matching what they were feeling when the time came to sync up soul wavelengths.
Layla had a tendency to flip everything upside down.
To everyone's surprise, Layla had stuck to Shiro like glue as soon as she met him. To everyone's shock and disbelief, Shiro had quickly agreed to be her meister.
Then, Layla set her sights on Aliyah.
“I heard you're the best in our class!”
At the time, Aliyah hadn't even looked up from her work. “That's what they keep telling me.”
“Yeah!” Layla didn't miss a beat. “Shiro told me he asked you to teach him, once,” she mused aloud, and Aliyah didn’t have to look up to know Layla’s thoughts were wandering off.
“I said no.” Aliyah had cut off her train of thought with a blunt refusal, hoping it would discourage the perky weapon and shoo her away for good.
“I remember him telling me about that!”
(It didn't look like Layla was going away at all, much less for good.)
“He wasn't super happy about it, I don't think.” Layla had continued, unperturbed. “Shiro works really hard to improve himself. It makes me feel bad because… I don't. I’m just… naturally good, somehow.” The confession hung in the air, making Aliyah wonder if she was supposed to offer some kind of consolation in return. “Anyways, it's really too bad you don't wanna hang out or anything. You seem really cool! We could be friends!”
That seemed to strike Aliyah, and she’d turned to the pistol with surprise glittering in her eyes. “I thought you wanted me to teach your meister.”
Layla’s head had tilted, allowing long, auburn hair to fall over her shoulder- and Aliyah hadn’t been sure if the confusion in bright green eyes was Layla’s or her own surprise reflecting back at her.
“You don’t have to be useful to me to be my friend, Aliyah,” the younger girl had informed her, suddenly serious. It was unlike Layla to stand still for that long. It caught Aliyah off guard.
That night, Aliyah had approached Cadence with a new question.
How do you take something back?
---
Somehow, she managed to communicate to Shiro that she’d be willing to teach him. She didn’t say it outright, but it was pretty clear that it was her own offer of friendship. It was proof that she was useful, even though Layla had promised there was no need to be.
Aliyah and Shiro got along swimmingly. They were similar souls; intelligent, persistent, and unbearably snarky. Studying and training often saw a flood of quips and jabs traded between the two meisters.
When their weapons would tag along, Cadence has to stop himself for apologizing for his meister’s sharp tongue. Layla always laughs, amused by the show.
---
After she makes her first friends, another not normal thing surfaces.
Aliyah won’t talk about herself.
She’ll talk about the things they learn in school, about the latest news, or the technique of a meister/weapon team. But when deeper topics win out, topics that build friendships, that drive conversation forwards, Aliyah stops talking.
It’s not like she even slips, either. There’s no accidental answer, no involuntary beginning of a story, not even a glimmer of reminiscence in her eyes.
There’s another batch of rumors about Aliyah that no one has dared to bring up to her face yet. Everyone’s seen the black slices on her shoulders, the twin marks that curl around each of her deltoids, the slashes that are clearly visible in the sweater vest and collared tank top duo she wears underneath the jackets.
Aliyah doesn’t talk about herself, so no one’s sure if they’re tattoos or scars- and no one knows why they’re black.
No one will ask.
Except Layla.
While they were training outside one day, baking in the Nevada heat, Aliyah had slipped her school uniform jacket off, folded it neatly, and shoved it in her bag.
“What are those? On your shoulders?”
Aliyah had paused, ran her fingers over one black line, and answered. “Scars.”
“What are they from? If you don’t mind me asking, of course,” Shiro had piped up, glasses glinting as bright as the intrigue in his eyes.
Instead of answering, all the breath had rushed out of Aliyah at once. She plopped back on her heels as if someone had pushed her down.
Cadence called her name, concerned, but she hadn’t responded.
“Hello?” Shiro joined in, raising his voice as if Aliyah hadn’t heard him before. “Where are they-”
To everyone’s surprise, Layla had stepped in front of her meister, planting herself in between him and Aliyah. “It’s sad.” She had simply stated. “It’s sad and scary. If she doesn’t want to answer, she doesn’t have to.”
Shiro could see tears pooling in Layla’s eyes. Her soul perception acted more like soul empathy- she tended to personally experience the feelings of others while in close proximity. So, if Layla was this disturbed… why didn’t Aliyah look bothered at all?
“It happened a long time ago.” Was the only explanation they got out of Aliyah before she had swung the topic back to the training session at hand.
---
Cadence almost forgot about that conversation. Almost.
They live together. It’s good for meister weapon teams, for resonation building- and Cadence has a little extra money to spare to afford an apartment in Death City.
The night after that conversation, he’d been woken up by screaming. Bloodcurdling, horrified, screaming.
He had sprinted to Aliyah’s room, already half transformed, fully expecting a kishin to be hovering over Aliyah’s bedside.
Instead, it was just Aliyah. Aliyah, wide-eyed and whimpering, clawing at the sheets like they were trying to eat her. With a little effort, Cadence had returned his arm to human instead of weapon, and with a little more effort, he woke Aliyah up from her nightmare.
After a lot of consoling- which was still weird for them because Cadence is a naturally touchy, physical person, and Aliyah seems to shy away from human contact, but they manage- Aliyah was finally breathing normally again, and the terror in her eyes had died down to a manageable flightiness.
She hadn’t told him anything about her nightmare, but he could guess at the contents after she turned to him with wide eyes and breathed out a confession.
“My parents were killed.”
Cadence… really hadn’t known what to say to that.
He blinked at her, stunned into silence, and finally asked, “By who?”
Wide, golden eyes had traced the length of Cadence’s arm where it reached out to hold her by the shoulders until she was staring down at her lap, staring at her own hands fisted in the sheets.
“By me.”
And that’s only the beginning, Cadence finds out.
---
She doesn’t open up about anything around other people, but she’ll talk pretty freely when she’s alone with Cadence- which is how he inevitably finds out.
Aliyah won’t talk about herself because Aliyah doesn’t know about herself.
One night while they were meal planning, he had asked her what her favorite food was. She had looked up at him, golden eyes oddly blank, and honestly answered, “I don’t know.”
He passes the answer off, at first. There’s a lot of good food out there, he understands not being able to choose between them.
The gravity of the situation doesn’t fully hit him until he wonders aloud one day, talking about birthdays and age differences in their class. The eleven year old twin weapons had been wreaking havoc, their true natures revealed in a full-blown prank war between two classes.
Cadence, grumbling about being caught in the crossfire, had asked Aliyah if she'd been that annoying when she was that age.
“I don’t remember.” She’d answered without hesitation.
It had taken him by surprise, and he’d turned to face her with another question already on his tongue.
“How old are you?”
Aliyah had regarded him with a guarded hesitation. She knew that concerned look in his eyes, knew she’d already done something weird- and she didn’t want to be weird again.
“I don’t know.” She’d finally answered, words rolling out of her molasses slow.
After a couple more prodding questions and hesitant answers, Cadence figures out that Aliyah literally does not know. The nightmare that she’d had a few weeks back had been her first full glimpse into her own past.
He calls Lord Death the very next day.
The shinigami is perplexed by their situation, but he's as bubbly and buoyant as ever, and suggests they bring their plight to the new professor on campus, Dr. Franken Stein. Apparently, Stein is some kind of Soul Expert- or at least, he’s very good at reading and manipulating souls- so maybe he can help with whatever weirdness is happening to Aliyah.
It’s worth a shot.
---
After their first meeting, Aliyah declares that she does not like Stein, and will not be going back.
Shortly after making this decision, she has another nightmare- of the screaming variety, to Cadence’s dismay. Her weapon drags her back to the professor’s office, and they all sit down and talk.
After questions upon questions and explanations and some soul poking and prodding, Stein had suggested that she might check inside of her soul for answers.
After a brief explanation from the professor on how to do that, Aliyah sat down with Cadence, resonated with him, and the two of them promptly dropped into the most disheveled looking library they’d ever seen.
“It’s not supposed to look like this.” Aliyah had noted, mostly to herself.
The first thing Cadence did was reach for a book on the shelf- the only one in sight that seemed fully intact- and opened it before Aliyah had time to stop him.
“Hold still, honey, hold still,”
“It’s alright, you’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna take care of you,”
The words would’ve been comforting if they weren’t interspersed with maniacal laughter, choked giggles undermining the sincerity of the sentiments.
Cadence couldn’t see anything. It was just white static and blurry shapes. He did make out the unmistakable glint of metal through the haze, and a child’s voice reached his ears.
“What’s that for, mommy? No- please don’t- please don’t- please-”
Once he realized that the child's voice was Aliyah’s voice, just pitched up a little higher, he wished he’d never touched the book. Especially when the child started to scream.
The sound is markedly different from Aliyah’s nightmare screams. In the present day, there are no sniffles, no shaky inhales, no too fast breaths. It was the same terror, but the Aliyah now doesn’t cry.
Cadence had dropped the book and stumbled back, staring at the offending article as if it had grown wings and flown.
“These must be my memories,” Aliyah realized, also staring at the book on the ground. “No wonder I can’t remember anything. This place is a wreck.”
“What was that?” Cadence had screeched, backing away from the crumpled pages in front of him. “Were those your parents? Was that you? Was that a knife?”
Aliyah hadn’t responded for a beat, golden eyes trained on the ground. When her fingers lifted to trace over the scar on her shoulder, Cadence connected the dots.
“Yes,” came Aliyah’s quiet answer. The look on her face told Cadence that she knew what she was saying was not normal, weird, out of the norm, that she wanted to retreat, to take it back and hide away again.
“They sounded… they sounded insane,” Cadence had breathed. The two of them stood still, frozen to the spot.
“They were.”
Aliyah didn’t look up from the floor.
“Why?”
Her fingers dug into her shoulder as soon as the question left Cadence’s mouth.
Here, sitting in her soul, resonating with her, with her chest rising and falling at the same pace as his, her thoughts whirling within arm’s reach… Because he was so connected with Aliyah in that moment, and for no other reason, he knew she thought it was her fault.
“Something must’ve happened nearby,” Cadence switched tracks, refusing to let her persecute herself for something that couldn’t possibly have been her fault. “Kishin can have afflicting wavelengths, you know. We learned about it in class, remember? Maybe there was one in your area, and your parents fell victim to the madness,”
Aliyah didn’t believe him, but Cadence could feel the relief flooding her system almost as palpably as his own as soon as he realized he was making a difference.
“You’re lucky to have even survived, Aliyah.” Cadence had decided, finally moving to step up next to his meister. For once, she didn't flinched away from him, just leaned into the hug he offered without question. After a beat, he had added, “I’m lucky to have such a strong meister.”
After that, Aliyah doesn’t protest the visits with Stein.
---
She talks with Cadence about her nightmares, about the little things that come back to her at random during the day, or about anything at all, trying to figure out for herself what she likes and doesn’t like.
They don’t talk about her parents. Aliyah doesn’t bring it up, and Cadence doesn’t push.
She doesn't like to talk about her parents, but the topic persists. Layla goes home all the time to visit her younger sister, and Maka’s dad is following her around almost constantly. The blonde meister actually hides underneath their lunch table one day in a desperate attempt to avoid him.
Aliyah is still surprised at how full their lunch table is- and how diverse a crowd Cadence seems to attract. Their crowd consists of Aliyah’s friends, Cadence’s friends, and- occasionally- Cadence’s friends’ friends.
Soul is the reason why Maka sits with them- and the reason behind all of the friends of Maka and Soul that stay to hang out in their general vicinity too.
Aliyah doesn’t like BlackStar, but she doesn’t have much of a choice about his company, since Tsubaki and Cadence have become pretty good friends from talking about managing their multi-form weapon transformations. It would be selfish of her to demand Cadence bar Blackstar (and by default, Tsubaki) from their table.
Aliyah doesn’t mind Lord Death’s son, nor does she mind his weapons- despite the rampant rumors running amok about the sisters' reign of terror before Kid adopted them or something. Lord Death’s daughter (whose name is Cassandra, which Aliyah thinks is a little more creative than Death the Kid), is very nice, and Aliyah finds herself gravitating more towards the daughter’s company than the son’s.
Very unsurprisingly, Layla and Patti get along like a house fire. Shiro is often too exasperated to put it out.
Eventually, her friends (or, more accurately, Cadence’s friends) want to know: what's your home life like?
“I don't have one.” She’d replied quietly, and the chatter at her lunch table screeched to a halt.
It hadn’t taken too long for the group to recover, and they'd clamored over each other, demanding to know how she didn’t have a home life. She had ignored them until they finally settled down.
“My parents are dead.” Aliyah had clarified before she took a bite of her lunch. The air had shivered, and the atmosphere had suddenly become much more tense than it was before.
“Oh.” someone whispered. It might’ve been Cassandra- or, as she’d pleaded with them to call her, Cassie.
“Is that why you want to be a meister?” someone else had asked.
Aliyah's face had twisted up with something like disgust before she could reply. “No. It wasn't really my choice.”
Vague and cryptic. Classic Aliyah. Cadence would have questions, later.
“How’d they die?”
The table had shot glares at the suspect with no tact (ahem, BlackStar), and Aliyah had hesitantly exchanged glances with her weapon.
“It's not a pretty story. I'd rather not talk about it.”
They had left it at that.
When the story became more widespread, the group had wondered why she didn't seem that broken up about it.
Aliyah gets frustrated. She yells, argues, and growls when her emotions get the best of her.
Aliyah gets sad. The wistful look in her eyes when she’s telling Cadence about an old memory or the frown that pulls on her lips when people avoid her isn't hard to recognize.
Aliyah gets hurt. She spits curses and hisses in pain when she gets roughed up, and Cadence doesn't like the way she sits and stares at nothing for a while after someone calls her rude names.
But she doesn't cry.
Layla cries a lot. Most of it isn't her fault- her empathy abilities pick up on sadness and happiness most easily. As they get to know Lord Death’s daughter, they find that the pressure to live up to her namesake causes her to blank on easy answers and make dumb mistakes a little too often for her liking. Cassie cries in frustration when the forgetfulness gets to be too much. The twins in their class are strong for their age, but they're still children, they still cry. Even Shiro had broken down once after failing over and over for hours.
But Aliyah doesn't cry.
---
Eventually, the majority of the first years find their partner- at least, their partner for the time being- and the crowd at Aliyah and Cadence’s lunch table grows. The eleven year old twins end up partnering with Cassie- a decision that her brother very much approves of, chanting symmetry, twins, perfect, the first day she introduces them to the lunch table. Jason has a bit of trouble finding a weapon partner- he can’t see souls, can only sense them, and he doesn’t resonate well with others, which makes him kind of undesirable.
Most people can resonate on a base level with a stranger- at least enough to achieve the subconscious resonation that forms just by holding the demon steel of someone’s weapon form. It’s a little harder to sync up enough to move the weapon around, a little harder to be in sync enough to coordinate attacks, and much, much harder to start the chain reaction that is Soul Resonance.
Jason, however, couldn’t even begin to worry about Soul Resonance. He couldn’t seem to achieve a base resonation steady enough to even hold a weapon.
At first, almost every weapon sought him out, seeking the challenge, hoping to be the special one that could resonate with Jason Blackmore.
The more people that tried and failed, the less people that stepped up to the plate. Eventually, rumor spread that Jason wasn’t a challenge, but a failure, and people stopped asking to take a test drive of their partnership.
The trouble starts with Onashi Hellmiss.
Not just for Jason, but for Aliyah, as well.
---
There are plenty of rumors about Onashi. She’s got dark hair, cut in choppy, uneven chunks, the strands interspersed with streaks of color- red, turquoise, cobalt, purple. She has more piercings than their entire class combined- and she was reportedly very upset when school dress code only allowed her ear piercings to remain on her face.
Immediately, the rumors surrounding her speak of rebellion and refusal to follow directions.
Dress code is a rule she very clearly skirts the line on. She wears the uniform, but it’s unbuttoned, hemmed, and slashed open until it fits her personal style- and just barely meets the school requirements.
The dress code is only the first infraction. In classes- especially combat classes- she argues with the teachers, insisting that this isn’t the only way, and that I’m not doing it wrong and you’re just shortsighted!
Gossip also tells that Onashi becomes ill at the oddest times. Maybe she’s just got a weak composition- or maybe she’s got brain cancer!!!- but Onashi is often excusing herself to go sit down, head between her legs, hands folded over the back of her neck. The stubborn teachers that don’t allow her to sit out find her point proven by a collapse, the girl rendered unseeing and unhearing for precious few seconds (or minutes) until the world comes back into focus.
Aliyah doesn’t have any classes with Onashi, so she only hears about the girl through the grapevine. Actually, she hears about the girl mostly through Jason.
Jason, for as little as he talks, complains about Onashi a lot.
According to him, Onashi is brusque and unfriendly, and is a weird combination of impulsively doing things for the hell of it and stubbornly refusing to change her ways. Either way, she refuses to bend to any rule, authority, or partner.
Apparently (and unsurprisingly) she’s partnerless too.
Jason groans and complains and sighs, but one day, out of nowhere, he plops down at the lunch table wide-eyed and stunned.
“Did someone hit you?” Cadence had wondered, waving his hand in front of his friend’s face. Jason had blinked a couple times, then, still looking like a deer in headlights, turned to respond to Cadence.
“I-” he paused, closed his mouth, frowned, then opened it again, “I have a weapon partner now.”
This warranted even Shiro’s attention, dragging the blond meister out of his most recent novel, and he’d looked up just in time to see Cadence light up like a christmas tree with excitement. Cadence almost immediately had Jason’s hand in his, vigorously shaking it to congratulate his friend, but Jason’s dark blue eyes were still clouded with confusion.
“What happened?” Aliyah wondered, at the same time that Layla demanded, “Who is it?”
The other meister had looked away, a hand raising to fiddle with his ponytail, as he always did when he was put on the spot. Judging by how quickly the dark strands fall out of the loop he usually kept it in, dropping the entire length of glossy, dark hair into his palm, he’d been messing with it for a while now.
“Onashi informed me that I’m her meister now.” He’d finally answered.
This hadn’t satisfied anybody’s curiosity, and Jason had to take a deep breath before launching into his explanation.
The two of them had been grouped together for an in-class exercise, since neither of them had partners and neither of them could seem to work well with anybody. (Unconsciously, in Jason’s case. Completely consciously, in Onashi’s.) Jason had refused- since wielding a weapon with a clashing wavelength could hurt both the meister and the weapon, and Jason had enough experience with that- but Onashi had… basically bullied him into at least trying.
“And we resonated,” Jason had breathed out the sentence like it still surprised him. “Just like that. And she laughed at me for being so worried about it! As if- as if she hadn’t heard about how difficult it is for me to resonate!” He complained, throwing himself into a slouch, arms crossed and lip stuck out in a pout.
Aliyah’s beginning to think that Jason’s not used to being made fun of- even in a friendly way. It’s not that he just doesn't like it, he just seems… surprised by the occurrence.
(Aliyah expects it, nowadays, but that’s another story.)
So, of course, the next day, Jason had been tailed by a newcomer.
Aliyah had been very interested to finally see this Onashi character, but Cadence had stood to shake her hand before she could get a good look, broad shoulders blocking the shorter newcomer.
From what she could see from almost leaning into Layla’s lap, Onashi was a little on the short side of average height, stocky in a way that gives her the curves Aliyah lacks, and ghostly pale.
When Cadence had finally moved out of the way, turning to introduce each of the members of their table, Aliyah had frozen on the spot.
“That’s Shiro, and his weapon Layla, and that’s my meister-”
Eyes that a dark, dark turquoise seemed to crash into Aliyah like the unforgiving waves of the ocean, pulling her into the sea green depths and effectively drowning her in their endless expanse. Onashi spoke before Cadence could finish.
“Aliyah.” Came the quiet intonation, full lips pressed in a thin, grave line.
It had taken three seconds for Onashi’s eyes to roll back in her head, two more for her knees to buckle, and one before she hit the ground, out cold.
Aliyah was in no better shape. While people crowded around Onashi, patting her cheeks and helping her sit up, Aliyah slid back in her seat, eyes wide, her Soul Perception locked on the beat of the girl behind those deep blue eyes.
Familiar voices, laughing, having fun, giggling, in and out of madness, arguing, yelling, disagreeing, shouting, pleading, screaming, crying,
Holding hands, little hands, fingers laced together, palms gripping steel, pitch black demon steel, glinting purple in the light,
Blue eyes, pinched in frustration, crinkled with laughter, soft with… with something, wide with surprise, with horror, with regret,
All in one smooth movement, Aliyah had swiveled in her seat, slung her bag over her shoulder, and bolted.
running running running
She only reappears after she’s nearly broken down outside of Stein’s office, knocking knocking knocking knocking until he walks out of a classroom nearby, summoned by the racket. She only reappears after she unloads on Stein, a stream of words that won’t stop, that don’t make any sense, that start over and over and over again-
“Onashi,” she had kept repeating, staring at the ground, at her shoes, the wall, anything that’s not Stein’s cold, calculating gaze. “I grew up with Onashi. She was there for all of it, for everything,”
She only reappears after the words stop coming out, after her lips stop moving around soundless syllables, after her mind stops revolving around Onashi, I grew up with Onashi, and she thinks she can focus on schoolwork again.
When she comes back to class, Layla moves to the other side of the classroom. Aliyah’s sure she’s picking up on the hurricane of emotions inside of her, and she doesn’t blame Layla for avoiding the mess she is right now.
Onashi comes back to the lunch table the next day. Aliyah does not.
Cadence knows that Onashi triggered some kind of flashback in Aliyah, and he knows Aliyah is very confused and upset by it. He notices that whenever Onashi comes up in conversation, Aliyah’s face screws up in a familiar expression.
He’d say it was the look people get before they’re about to cry, but Aliyah doesn’t cry. She hasn’t yet, and she doesn’t now.
Eventually, she returns to the lunch table. Onashi sits as far away from Aliyah as she can while still sitting by Jason. Aliyah watches her.
Aliyah watches familiar hands, familiar eyes, a familiar laugh, a familiar smile, a familiar frown, a familiar soul sitting just out of her reach.
Aliyah watches Onashi corner her after lunch one day.
“Stop looking at me like that.” The weapon had insisted, the demand sounding suspiciously like a threat as she hissed it through bared teeth.
Aliyah doesn’t take well to threats- and she’d usually bristle at the mere insinuation of one- but she knows this voice too well to react to its threats anymore.
“Jason is my meister now.” Onashi added- and Aliyah couldn’t help but notice the use of now. Clearly, Onashi had remembered the same thing as Aliyah.
Onashi’s sleek black scythe, spinning faster than the eye could track, tossed between Aliyah’s hands as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Repeating patterns like muscle memory, resonating, running, running, running-
“You can’t remember anything either,” Aliyah had noted, head tilting, golden eyes watching, processing processing processing. “Can you?”
Onashi had scowled. “None of your goddamn business.”
Aliyah rolled her eyes. “You might as well have said yes.” She’d muttered, unimpressed. “Don’t you want answers? Aren’t you curious? Confused? Scared? Angry?” Onashi hadn’t reacted to any of the listed adjectives, so Aliyah tacked on, “Anything?” for good measure.
“I feel dizzy,” Onashi grit out. She was clearly aggravated, but her rage was a heatless fire. It’s freezing, stone-cold, silent and steady. “Every time I remember something, I get dizzy. There’s a lot to remember, so you can imagine how often that happens.”
Aliyah had opened her mouth to guess, but Onashi had cut her off with a hissed demand for her to be quiet.
“I can deal with the dizziness. I don’t like it, but I can get past it.” The shorter girl crossed her arms over her chest and shifted her weight onto one leg- and the pose was so recognizable, Aliyah could draw it out with her eyes closed. “What I don’t like, is how disturbing the things I remember are.”
Aliyah had felt small, and it had a lot to do with how accurate Onashi was. She’d argued anyways.
“But-”
“What’s the best way to slit someone’s throat?”
Aliyah answered before she even processed how gruesome the question was. “Tilt their head down. If you pull their head back, the windpipe blocks the jugular and the carotid.”
“They’ll still die, but it’s slower. Less efficient.” Onashi finished for her, stealing the words off the tip of her tongue. “Tell me, Lee, why the fuck do we know that?”
Aliyah hadn’t answered, Lee, Lee, Lee, echoing over and over in her head.
Onashi noticed her mistake and clapped a hand over her mouth as if she could take it back. She hadn’t said anything else, just turned on her heel and left Aliyah there to stare off into space, old memories clicking into place, pages filling out in a broken down library.
When Aliyah had followed, reaching out like a lost child, Onashi had smacked her hand away.
“Stay away from me.” She bit out- and the words slice deep into Aliyah, as if Onashi had stabbed her with her own blade. The way her voice broke around the demand told Aliyah it cuts Onashi just as deep. “Just stay away. Whatever we did, whatever we went through- I don't want to remember it.”
Aliyah stands still. Lets Onashi leave. Watches the only piece of her past walk away.
But she doesn’t cry.
Aliyah Faulkner does not cry.
At least, not in front of other people.
When she finally lets herself go, her door is locked, her curtains are drawn, and she's certain that Cadence isn't home.
That's when the tears prickle against the back of her eyes and her chest feels hollow.
Sometimes she tries to fight it, tries to pretend like it's not happening, but the tears come anyways.
Sometimes she just barely gets the door closed before she's crumpled on the ground, trying to silence her sobs as best she can.
She cradles a sliced palm to her chest, grieves the parents she never had, the childhood ripped away from her. Sometimes she looks in the mirror and traces over every scar she can find, but the tears aren't quite enough to soothe the pain in her heart.
Knowing that Onashi is this close, knowing that Onashi stands on the other side of the gaping chasm that Aliyah doesn’t have the means to cross, knowing that she’s alone alone alone in this, alone in her experiences, alone in her confusion, alone in her pain-
When Cadence comes home, she’s pretty sure he knows she's been crying.
He doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t press her for answers, just says, “You can always talk to me about it. I’m your weapon. Your partner. We do this together.”
Aliyah’s never sure how to reply to that.
Aliyah cries, but only where no one will see her. Only when no one will hear her.
She's vigilant about this. Carefully in control, checking off each day she's survived so far.
The day that eventually breaks Aliyah’s carefully maintained track record happens the day after what is easily the scariest day in Death City history.