This is her first impression of him: he's shorter than her, slender and thin-limbed. If she were inclined to kindness, she could perhaps call him wiry, but she's not, and so skinny is the word that comes to her instead. Quick, perhaps, and light on his feet, but he'd be no match for her at all in close to medium range combat, with or without weapons. Fidgety too, and probably easily distractible; even now he's shifting from foot to foot, minute movements of his head indicating that his attention is being divided by multiple unimportant stimuli.

Why why why - you seemed to be the only person that questioned, or cared, or gave it any thought whatsoever. Maybe it was a scanner thing. Maybe the other S units also couldn't stop themselves from asking themselves these things too, were brushed off by Command in the same nearly contemptuous way. You wouldn't know. Your current social circle consists of 21O, the Commander, and Pod 153. You are pitifully excited to increase that number by 33% by meeting this new android.

“I know,” Soul sighs, sounding so unbearably exasperated and inexplicably fond that her heart is sent into overdrive. “Can’t take you anywhere without worrying about whether we’re gonna get kicked out ‘cause you thought punching someone was easier than using your words -”

“Y-you’re one to talk!” Maka crosses her arms, clutching them close in an attempt to calm the pounding in her chest. “You hate making conversation more than I do!”

“Lucky I got you with me then, hm?” He sends her a devastating, sharp-toothed grin, and her heart refuses to be caged in by her ribs and arms any longer, leaping into her mouth.

She hesitates. She's hugged Soul loads of times, and vice versa - they've never been shy about physical contact, couldn't be, really, what with him being a weapon and her wielding him. Honestly, she'd probably been in far more compromising positions with Soul in reality.

But something about the way they touched each other in the dream felt different. A kind of casual comfortableness, perhaps, a intimacy that seems strange and out of place in their reality. Just imagining it happening with the Soul sitting across from her, solid and immutable and unequivocally real, causes a low-lying embarrassment to settle in the pit of her stomach.

Shinigami are tools of the living, and so your father tried to write it into the flesh of his firstborn. But tools must have wielders, ones that are equal to the strength of the task, or all risk being consumed. A lesson the world learnt swiftly, but not so swift to prevent your creation.

Asura had a name. Your father merely calls you Kid, and on good days you think that to be a source of pride. On bad days, you think it to be a reminder of the brother you are too close to becoming.

" 'Never being able to live up to my father?' " he interrupts, tone deadly level. "Don't worry, Maka, you made that point quite well yesterday too, and I assure you, I am well aware of all that I am lacking in comparison to him." Even with the mask, she can read his quiet grief, hear the loss in his voice. The crushing weight of regret and guilt bears down upon her, and she nearly reaches out for him, lips already forming an apology -

But Kid's next words betray none of the lost son she once called 'friend', and her ire spikes as he says, "However, I will tell you as I told you not twenty-four hours ago: whether or not I possess all the qualities as my late father, I am still your god - and your employer. Therefore I suggest you treat me with the respect I deserve."

Soul doesn't say, You were the one that challenged him in the first place. He doesn't say, Kid's our friend, and you know he only agreed to it because he knew it'd make you happy. He doesn't say, Stop being a sore loser and acting like a brat and let's go play basketball to blow off some steam.

He doesn't say, I wish you cared half as much about my opinion as you do Kid's.

What he does say is, "If you break your hands, we won't be able to challenge him for a rematch tomorrow."

"Get up," he's mumbling. "Get up. Get up. Get up."

"Cha-" Marinette swallows, tries again. "Ch-Chat Noir?"

Her hand brushes against his elbow and he flinches, immediately curling back up into himself, shoulders shaking.

"Please," he rasps, voice muffled through his arms. "Please. Just a few minutes."

The small, beaten note in his voice breaks her heart, and in its place a burning need to do something flares up. "Wait there," she tells him firmly, moving towards the hatch. "I'll be right back."

But when Marinette comes back, pitcher of water and a platter of cookies balanced precariously in her hands, the balcony is empty. Nothing is there to even suggest that he was there in the first place. She leaves her offerings on the little table anyway, just in case.

She throws the soggy, dew-laden cookies away the next morning.

"Sometimes," his magister tells him quietly, later, "the kindest thing you can do for someone is to do the right thing for them."

It's not a lesson Lucas needs to be taught, but he appreciates the reminder, nonetheless.

You hated your dad's questions. Your words stumbled along without a shred of the eloquence that your father was known for, and you knew, you knew that the more you rambled the stupider you sounded, but you couldn't help it. All you could do was watch the furrow between his brows grow deeper and deeper and no amount of talking could smooth it out. Whatever answer he was looking for, you could never find it, and always walked away feeling like you had disappointed him deeply and would never live up to him.

It's enough of a concession that Law's able to recede back into his usual barely-awake state of being during these events. Or attempt to, anyway. Instead he spends the next twenty minutes berating himself for his lapse in judgement. He had survived nearly four years in this hellhole by doing his best to avoid everyone else and keeping his head down and mouth shut; he wasn't tough enough or clever enough to survive any other way. And yeah, okay, he wasn't always very good at shutting up or not drawing attention to himself when his temper got the best of him, but he'd at least been able to stick to the avoiding part. So naturally, less than two days after getting the crap beaten out of him, he decides to go for broke, and with someone who not only has actively threatened to kill him but is also incredibly invested in projecting how much she loathes the organization to everyone who has eyes.

Tsukasa can be obedient. Tsukasa can follow rules. Tsukasa can stop running around like a crazy person, can tuck in his shirt, can stop yammering a mile a minute, can keep his hands to himself when Amane orders him to. He is content, mostly, to let Amane tell him when to stop being Tsukasa and to be more Amane, a distinction he's only just begun to realize. Especially when it means that the perpetual little crease between Amane's eyebrows will smooth out briefly, when it means that Amane might agree to play a game with him, maybe even come exploring if he's lucky.

Here are your few talents: You can lie as well as a fae is able to. You've a fair hand for stealing and you're better at most at slyfooting and sleight of hand. You've a talent for gossip and secrets and change roles and attitudes as easily as slipping into a new pair of clothes. You also have, through much trial and error and threat of death, acquired a particular skill of slipping in and out of the mortal world without detection by Madoc's patrols.

Here are your worst weaknesses: The inability to curb your tongue. The tendency to find levity at the worst of times, most often when on the other side of a fist. Your tail, which gives away your every anxious thought. The latter at least you can control by hiding it. As for the others, well, you've gotten very good at running, and, failing that, you've had much experience in taking a beating and still living afterwards, even if it's from the perspective of the floor.

Anytime you jump off a cliff or tell Bruno to shut up, I'll be there, Alberto had said, and so it was. But he was there even when Luca wasn't trying to be brave - or rather, the lack of him was. With every pillow fort he built with Giulia, with every new food he tried, he felt his absence, an Alberto-shaped hole that made every experience just a little more dull.

He did his best to fill this emptiness with letters, and hearing Alberto's voice on the phone, with all of its verve and expression, helped to blur his absence a little more.

"You're trying to capture something that can't be captured," Agnieszka tells him reproachfully. "It's not like - magic isn't some sort of math equation. It has a life of its own, like a stream, and you just guide it to where you want it to go." And then she's off again about forests and gleaning and picking trails and other words that sound more like they belong in a guidebook for hiking than a treatise on magic. It's like they're speaking two completely different languages. Sarkan has never felt this mystical "consciousness" to his magic, no sense of a will or instinct. Every spell he's ever done on purpose has been the steady, patient work of building: the spells providing the blueprints, his words placing the bricks, his magic holding them together like mortar.