Archive of Our Own ^beta

It started with slips of paper.

He was alone too.

“Blair!” Maka scolds, uprighting her coffee mug her cat knocked over. She dabs at the spilt coffee with a napkin, but the cat drops a piece of paper onto the spill. “Stop that!”

She picks up the piece of paper, and curiosity grips her. Once she realizes exactly what she's holding on to, she can’t help but read the contents of the letter for the thousandth time. At least, what she can read. Some of the words are smudged now.

“You’re lucky I have a good memory,” Maka says, glaring at the miscreant. “How did you even get to this anyway?”

Blair meows at her.

“...Oh no.”

Maka sprints to the closest where she keeps her box of letters. Instead of finding the box on the shelf where it is supposed to be, she finds it on the floor, its contents scattered about. Some of them have fresh tears on the edges. 

“Shit!” She drops to the ground and starts gathering the pages, inspecting each one for damage. One has been ripped in half.

Perhaps her cat understands her more than she realizes, because Blair grabs the other half of the ripped letter with her teeth and sprints out of the room.

“Blair, no, get back here!”

Blair, of course, does not listen. Maka follows after, turning the corner just in time to see her cat jump onto the kitchen counter and out of the open window.

She curses again, and rushes out the front door. She watches as Blair trots down the fire escape. Only, her cat doesn’t reach the bottom, but rather stops midway and jumps to the open window of the apartment building across.

In that apartment, unbeknownst to her, a man was rereading the last letter he had ever written, never sent.

Blair jumps through his window a little earlier than usual. Soul puts down his letter and bends down to scratch the chin of his cat.

“Way too early for dinner,” he says. “What’s that in your mouth?” He moves to grab at it, but his fingers merely graze the paper before the doorbell rings.

When he opens the door, he’s met with the prettiest green eyes. He takes in the woman, shorter than him, standing in the threshold, and, of course, greets her like a gentleman.

“You still wear your hair in pigtails? Are you nine?”

The woman glares. “Fuck you.” She’s panting a bit.

“...You good?”

“My cat is in your apartment,” she says, standing straight. She takes a peek inside. “So, this is where she goes when she’s not with me.”

“ Your cat, huh?” Soul teases. “Pretty sure she’s my cat. She always has dinner here. She’s got her own litter box next to the bathroom. Clean it and everything.”

She has the right to look affronted. The cat is likely under her care during the day. “Excuse me?”

“Hm?” 

“ I’m the one who takes her to get her shots, I’m the one who got her spayed–”

“Ah, that must have been the day she came home super pissed. Wouldn’t come out from underneath the couch. Left a nasty scar on me.”

Her face only scrunches up more. “I also feed her breakfast. Does she wake you up an hour before your alarm is supposed to go off every morning?”

“No, but does curl up next to you when you sleep at night?”

“She sleeps next to me when I nap!”

He’s grinning at her, and it’s making her angry. Then he holds out a hand. “‘Name’s Saul.”

Her anger drains almost instantly. “Mackenzie,” she replies, tentatively shaking his hand. “You don’t look like a Saul.”

“My parents suck at names. My brother’s name was Wesley.”

“Wesley sounds better than Saul.”

“Damn.”

Blair chooses that moment to weave her way through Soul’s legs. He picks her up and Mackenzie snatches the piece of paper out of the cat’s mouth. Soul gives her an odd look and her face flushes slightly. 

“Um, thanks."

“For what?”

“For taking care of her half the time. And I’m sorry for earlier. I mean, a few minutes ago.”

“Really, no problem.” He hesitates. “Mackenzie, are you busy this Thursday?”

This surprises her, clearly. “I am.” His heart sinks. “...But I suppose I could make time.”

He smiles, sharp teeth on display. “Cool. How’s three at the park?”

Her eyes widen at his mouth, but only for a moment. She beams back at him. “Three-thirty. Goodbye.” She turns to go, leaving Blair behind, and Soul closes the door behind her. 

The park is a five minute walk from the apartments. It occurs to Maka that she isn’t sure where exactly in the park to meet, and he and his white hair are nowhere to be seen. 

She waits a few minutes before she catches sight of him. “Hey,” he says. “You’re early.”

Maka checks her phone. It’s 3:28. “So are you.” 

“Not as early as you. Why suggest a 3:30 meeting time if you're gonna show up way earlier?” He crouches down. “You brought Blair.”

The truth is their last conversation had left her flustered. After that, Maka felt nervous all throughout the evening, and she wasn’t faring much better the next day. She showed up forty-five minutes early. 

Even now, the snark that should have annoyed her instead gave her butterflies. Best to ignore it. “She likes the park. She screams at me if I don’t bring her. How do you know her name?”

Saul looks up, still scratching under the cat’s chin. “What do you mean?”

“I never told you her name was Blair.”

“No shit.” He laughs, bewildered. “You named her Blair too?”

“Yeah. I unofficially adopted her…several years ago. I was having a rough day; I realized I had lost someone I knew for a very long time. Then one day, she shows up on my doorstep.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Saul offers.

“They aren’t dead,” she calmly corrects. “At least, I hope they aren’t.”

He tells her: “I know exactly how you feel. Something similar happened to me, and next thing I know I find this shithead gouging my front door.” 

Saul continues to pet said shithead. 

The rest of the time at the park is spent talking about friends, career choices, and aspirations. Funny how a cat can bring people together.

A year and many trips to the park, movie nights, etc. later, they made the decision to move in together. 

“Alright, I think that’s it,” Saul says as he enters his empty apartment. Though it won’t be his for long–Maka’s things are already packed. 

Maka is holding out a box; Saul’s. “There’s one more thing actually. This was on the shelf in your closet.”

Saul’s eyes widen and, with trembling hands, he takes the box from her, trying to steady them. His eyebrows furrow and she can tell he’s holding back a sigh.

“Saul? Is everything okay?”

He doesn’t hear her until she repeats his name. “Huh? Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s, uh, load this in the back and head out.”

Maka expressed her desire to live close to a forest during one of their first dates, a desire she’s had for years. Saul thought it was a cool idea. So they settled for a house in the countryside, only a twenty-minute drive from the city.

Saul first brings in Blair but doesn’t let her out of the cage just yet; she continues to yowl as she had done so the second she was tricked into going into her cage, but she would just have to deal with it. They then unload the moving truck and place boxes in the rooms they belong to. Only then do they start unpacking. 

After a while of unpacking, they both stop.

“Now, I can’t be sure,” Saul says, “But Blair might be hungry.”

Blair protests loudly.

“I don’t knooow,” Maka sing-songs. “She can’t possibly be too hungry.

Blair persists even further at the bars of her wicked enclosure. 

“She doesn’t sound too upset, maybe we should just ignore–”

Blair hisses, and swipes through her cage.

“Shit, alright, calm down. I’m going to feed the beast,” he tells Maka. 

Less than a second after Saul leaves the room, Maka sees the box that her partner looked so glum about. 

While she feels immense guilt, she can’t help herself. Her father cheated on her mother, and it still hurts to think about. So with scissors, she cuts through the tape and reveals, to her surprise, stacks and stacks of letters. She glances at one and her eyes widen when she reads the date. 

Perhaps a letter from a great-great-great-grandparent? 

Her eyes skim, and then catch. It isn’t the words that get her attention–not at first–but the script.

This is her handwriting.

Maka has reason to doubt that maybe it isn’t her handwriting, just uncannily similar. But then comes the what . The contents. She had written these words. 160 years ago.

Her heart pounds. She picks up another letter, this time reading it carefully. No doubt these were hers. The only person who would have these is him . And she had given up on him long ago. Was Saul really the recipient of these letters? Or was Saul simply a relative?

Saul. Soul.

Goddammit. 

Footsteps echo back into the house, and she quickly closes the box and picks it up. When he enters the room, she is standing and facing the door. He stops dead in his tracks when he sees the box in her hand. The tape is clearly cut through the center. 

“I just opened this,” Maka tells him, handing over the box. “Then I saw they were papers. Figured you wouldn’t want me reading them.”

He reaches for the box, that sad look crossing his face again, and takes it. He doesn’t seem to know what to do at first, just stares down at it. 

“Thanks,” he murmurs, setting the box down with clammy hands and taping it back up.

Suddenly an idea forms in her head.

They just finished putting away all of their clothes when Soul had to step away to use the bathroom. After doing his business and washing his hands, he cups them under the water and scrubs his face. Thinking about those letters always got to him. Soul stares in the mirror for a second before looking away with a sigh. 

After drying his hands, he returns to their bedroom where Mackenzie is nowhere to be found. But something catches his eye.

There, on their air mattress, is a pile of folded papers and for a moment his heart stops. Surely she didn’t…

Hesitant and almost afraid of what he might find, he makes his way over and crouches down. Soul picks up a random letter on top of the pile.

These were his. No, not letters carefully kept in a box, lugged from place to place, but his words , decades old. 

These were all done in his own handwriting. Soul skims the letter, then picks up another and skims it too. The only person who could have these is–

“Soul.”

He turns so quickly he hurts his knee. But he doesn’t care. In the doorway, his girlfriend stands, her eyes never leaving his

He’s very quiet. “I haven’t heard that name in a while.”

With another letter in hand, he stands up (he didn’t even realize he had sat down) and makes his way over to his girlfriend. She doesn’t move. “Mackenzie?”

“How old are you?”

Soul nearly chokes on spit. “Thirty-two.”

She takes a step forward. There is little room left between them. “How long have you been thirty-two?”

“What is this, Twilight?” he says, almost hysterical.

Her brows scrunch up fast but soften just as quickly. Mackenzie-Maka reaches up and cups his cheek. His laugh dies down but he still can’t meet her eyes. She brushes away something wet.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispers.

“Maka,” he sobs. “Maka, I’m–I’ve been–all this time…”

Another hand cups his other cheek to wipe away another tear, prompting him to look at her. Wetness threatens to spill from her eyes too. 

She smiles, and Soul matches it. Maka leans forwards to rest her forehead against his and he meets her halfway.

They sit back on their air mattress watching cartoons on their TV on the floor eating Chinese takeout. They would get furniture soon. 

“You know,” Soul says, “I had written to you one last time. It was an important letter, but by the time I tried to deliver it, the forest, along with that tree in the cave, where we would always exchange letters, was cleared for land development. Hang on.”

Soul gets up from the mattress, startling Blair who had been napping on his legs. His hair is ruffled; maybe her own hair was just as messy.

He exits the room, but talks loudly enough for her to hear. “One day I realized I missed writing to you. Told myself I didn’t care how busy either of us were, I was going to see you. I had written down the address of the place I was staying at that time, and wrote that if you could not make it to me, then you could tell me where to meet you.” 

Soul walks back into the room. “I was prepared to make time. But then, y’know…”

He hands her a piece of paper that had been folded up several times. He plops back on the mattress behind her, startling Blair once again as Maka opens it and reads the date:

“So, you waited until the 80’s–the 1980’s–to finally tell me your address? Is that all?” she asks, teasingly.

He refuses to meet her eyes. “Among other things.”

Maka laughs, liltingly. “You’re such a dork.”

“No, shut up, I’m cool.”

She snorts, and leans back against him. He wraps his arms around Maka as she asks, “You gonna read it with me?”

“Might as well,” Soul answers, chin on her shoulder, and a kiss to the back of her neck. “I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”

The young couple finish reading Soul’s last letter, and begin to read back their old ones. (“Aha! I told you you forgot the date!” “Shut up.”) As they do, a cat with a bit more than nine lives curls up in the corner of another room.

“About damn time,” Blair murmurs as she closes her eyes to nap.