Soul Eater Fic: You Were There
Played the HD remake of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus recently. This is the result.
Title: You Were There
Fandom: Soul Eater/Ico
Rating: T
Pairing: Soul/Maka
Summery: He's the victim of an ancient curse, locked in a tomb and left to die. Despite his situation he still finds time to help a fellow prisoner.
He hears the sound of hooves clop, clop, clopping against rock, feels his body bob up and down the the rhythm of the horse's pace, and realize that he's woken up. Finally.
His captors chat calmly, and that just enrages him all the more. Oh how he wishes to break free of these stupid bonds, rip off this blindfold and cut them to shreds. But he knows that struggling would only result in being hit over the head again, and he might lose his window of escape, if it hasn't already passed.
Trying to keep calm, he focuses on figuring out where he is. He smells musk, hears the subtle brushing of fronds and the rustling of leaves and he knows that they're passing through a forest. But where he's headed, he can't give a shit about unless he get's out of here.
Another half hour passes, before suddenly his captors fall into silence, almost a revered one. He supresses the urge to make a smart remark and listens.
Roaring wind, crashing waves, his heart sinks in dread when he suddenly figures it all out.
Two insults slip from his tongue as they make their way down to sea level, having hit his head against what he assumed was a cliff wall. They silence him with sharp words and within five minutes he seated in something that moves in rhythm. A boat.
Three of them climb on in, and while he can't pinpoint which direction he's going in he knows their destination. The sea is cold and it sprays him and then the wind assaults him and makes him shiver, chilling his skin under his thin clothing.
The scraping of a metal, massive gate is the next abnormality to his hearing and then the wind silences and he feels the sun's rays vanish.
They dock, he's pulled to his feet and forced to walk, guided by his chains, through long, long hallways and then window stairs.
He's forced to get them a sword from an alter he can't see. He hears raw, unknown energy crackle and green light filters through his blind and bleeds through his eyelids and then stone drags along the ground. A new pathway opened.
More stairs. Up and up they go before they step on a platform. Something moves and then the platform they are standing on ascends, and they enter a new room.
Something in his gut tells him this is the end of the line.
His footsteps are drowned out by the ones from his armored captors, but judging by the echo, they're in a pretty big room.
He's taken up smaller steps, and then, suddenly, his chains are gone.
Before he has time to retaliate, he's tossed against stone, and then here's the rumble of something shutting.
"We are sorry." One said. "It's for the good of the village."
"That's bullshit!" He snaps at them, but his response his lost when the stone clashes against stone and he feels it grow dark.
His fear grows. He needs to act now.
He's able to pull his blindfold off with his newly freed hands, and with what little light there is he's able to make out that he's in some kind of round coffin. He pushes angrily against the sealed opening, desperate to get out.
In the far distance something moves the earth. He figure's it's the platform going back down again. Trying to shake his prison coincides with the tremor, and rock begins to crumble underneath the coffin. Hope growing, his movements grow more violent, and then, with a crack, the hollowed, round stone breaks free of it's perch and rolls off whatever it's standing on.
It crashes against the ground and splits, sending him tumbling out, out into brighter light and he hits his head on stone.
Dazed from his one way trip to the floor, he lays there and tries to recover, in no hurry because he doubts those assholes will come back.
He rolls onto his back, staring up at where he is. It's a large, cylinder shaped chamber, towering high above him. Torches on the spiral staircase leading up and windows at the top provide his eyesight some light. There's also something hanging at the top that he can't make out what it is.
Lining the walls are other round, stone coffins, several are open, but most are closed. He feels sick to his stomach thinking about what's in them.
How many have been sacrificed in this ritual he'd gotten himself roped into?
His headache clears up enough for him to stagger to his feet and try to come up with a way out. The only way into the temple, safely, at least, is sealed off with a slab of stone. He runs a hand through his white hair and decides there's nowhere left to go but up.
One ladder on the other end of the room leads to a platform lined with more tombs, and the other leads to the winding staircase, and, while he's getting so very sick of stairs, it's all he's got going for right now.
He swiftly climbs the ladder, rather fit for his young age, and starts up the spiral path.
The air smells fresher than it should, especially for a room like this, and he finds himself hoping for a broken window available at the top.
A dead end eventually comes in his path, but a chain hanging from it allows him to continue on his way.
As he nears the top, he hears the faint creaking of metal for some reason. And he feels a draft. Picking up the pace he reaches the top of the pathway. The stone further ahead of him had given way, but fortunately to his right is a broken window within his reach.
A look to his left has him freeze solid.
What is hanging from the ceiling is a cage, spiked and warding off anybody who dare came near it, but that isn't what stops him.
There's a small figure inside, with pale skin and a clean, almost glowing, white dress. He wonders if she's also apart of the ritual.
He should keep going, out that broken window behind him, but he can't leave a victim of this screwed up tradition here.
"Hello?" He calls out.
The figure in white moves, and then green and red clash, meet, hold and he's given such a look of desperation and he now knows that he can't leave her down here.
"I-I'll get you out!" He promises, before turning to the window and climbing out.
He's never been more grateful to see the sun, but he has a task at hand. He needs to find a way to lower the cage. The roof of the temple is just below him, so he drops down and circles the outside of the chamber.
Another broken window presents itself, just beyond the broken part of the pathway. He climbs through back into the room and onto the other platform. There's a switch by the wall, which he pulls.
Gears and cogs he can't see start to move and the cage starts to descend. Sighing in relief, he climbs back out the window, through the other one and starts on his way back down.
The cage doesn't make it all the way down to the ground, but he know's he's cleared the biggest obstacle thus far. The girl inside looks hopefuly, and rather frightened still.
"Just hang on!" He tells her, his voice echoing loudly in the chamber. He crosses the room under her cage, trying to figure out a way to reach the lock and free her.
He eyes the other ladder, and follows that to the other platform and how close it got to where the cage hung. Moving quickly he climbs the other ladder and travels down the path until he's level with the top of the cage.
He get's a running start and leaps onto the roof of the metal prison.
The chain holding it breaks under their combined weight and it goes crashing to the floor, throwing him off.
He's sick of getting intimate with the floor, and sits up once his head clears to find the cage door is open.
The girl stepping out of it is barefoot, with pale blonde hair and probably no older than he is. She crosses the room to where he's sitting and watching her with a raised eyebrow.
Her mouth open and gibberish he can't understand comes out of her mouth, but it's questioning and he can guess.
"What are you here for?" He asks her. "Were you being sacrificed too?"
She looks at him, equally confused, and crouches to his level. He meets her green eyes and study's her as she examines him too. She says something else he can't understand.
Neither notice the ceiling beginning to drip shadows and darkness like ink. He doesn't move at all until she's eveloped in shapeless shadows and suddenly dragged away from him.
He moves, but can't outrun what ever that shadowy figure is. The girl cries out as she's pulled into a dark vortex in the stone ground, slowly sinking inside.
His hand grabs hers and yanks her free from the dark quicksand. The being looks almost human like, but it's shape is distorting, not menacing looking, but the threat of it's existance is clear.
He pulls the girl out of he vortex's reach as the being emerges again, he focuses.
A flash of light engulfs his arm and he charges at it, leaping into the air and cutting it down.
He turns around, and can't blame the girl for staring at his hand with wide, almost frightened eyes.
Or rather, the blade that was once his hand.
"They sacrifice people like me down at my village." He tells her, though he knows it's futile. "When they reach the age of thirteen, once a year, one disappears, and we never see them again..."
And his parents had tried to hide it all their lives, they'd known what was to happen to a little scythe weapon like him somehow. But they still found out...
The girl says something else, and extends a hand, which he takes and grasps firmly with the hand that was once a blade.
"Let's get out of here."
She pulls him in the opposite direction when he tries to take the route up the spiral pathway out, back towards the sealed door.
He opens his mouth to tell her it's useless, but then her hand touches the stone and it flashes bright green.
And then it slides up and allows them out.
He stares, and the only thing she offers him is a smile.
"I think I might get used to having you around."
It was made clear earlier that there would be plenty of miscommunications between them, but somehow she get's the gist of it and giggles softly.
He takes her hand again, pulling her down the hallway to where the moving platform was earlier. There's a pathway around the chasm, leading to an arching entry way and to the outside.
They carefully skirt around the wide pit and to this doorway, straight outside, where he's met with a bridge. It crosses the turbulent sea below them and to another looming structure, different than the temple where sacrifices are left to die.
As they cross he decides it's a good idea to keep holding her hand, for the stone, weakened by salt water and rain and other elements, gives way under them about halfway across.
In the rush of adrenaline he tightens his hold on her hand and manages to pull her up before she's left dangling for too long. She murmurs something in her foreign tongue and they keep moving.
In the other structure it's darker, and a long corridor meets them, lit by various torches every few arches.
He and the girl end up sitting to the side of it, before they make the long trek down the crumbling rock hallway.
He absentmindedly fiddles with his red tunic, having it harden slightly from the drying salt water he was sprayed with who-know's-how-many-hours ago.
For about two minutes there's silence, before the girl, who'd been staring down the corridor, spoke again in her tongue, saying one word which Soul misses.
He let's out the universely accepted noise of confusion. She repeats her word.
"Maka."
"Maka?"
She nods, and points to herself. "Maka."
He can't help but crack a grin, and points to himself.
"Soul."
"Soul." She nods in understanding.
He chuckles, and stands. His hand takes hers and they walk down the long, dark corridor.
Title: You Were There
Fandom: Soul Eater/Ico
Rating: T
Pairing: Soul/Maka
Summery: He's the victim of an ancient curse, locked in a tomb and left to die. Despite his situation he still finds time to help a fellow prisoner.
He hears the sound of hooves clop, clop, clopping against rock, feels his body bob up and down the the rhythm of the horse's pace, and realize that he's woken up. Finally.
His captors chat calmly, and that just enrages him all the more. Oh how he wishes to break free of these stupid bonds, rip off this blindfold and cut them to shreds. But he knows that struggling would only result in being hit over the head again, and he might lose his window of escape, if it hasn't already passed.
Trying to keep calm, he focuses on figuring out where he is. He smells musk, hears the subtle brushing of fronds and the rustling of leaves and he knows that they're passing through a forest. But where he's headed, he can't give a shit about unless he get's out of here.
Another half hour passes, before suddenly his captors fall into silence, almost a revered one. He supresses the urge to make a smart remark and listens.
Roaring wind, crashing waves, his heart sinks in dread when he suddenly figures it all out.
Two insults slip from his tongue as they make their way down to sea level, having hit his head against what he assumed was a cliff wall. They silence him with sharp words and within five minutes he seated in something that moves in rhythm. A boat.
Three of them climb on in, and while he can't pinpoint which direction he's going in he knows their destination. The sea is cold and it sprays him and then the wind assaults him and makes him shiver, chilling his skin under his thin clothing.
The scraping of a metal, massive gate is the next abnormality to his hearing and then the wind silences and he feels the sun's rays vanish.
They dock, he's pulled to his feet and forced to walk, guided by his chains, through long, long hallways and then window stairs.
He's forced to get them a sword from an alter he can't see. He hears raw, unknown energy crackle and green light filters through his blind and bleeds through his eyelids and then stone drags along the ground. A new pathway opened.
More stairs. Up and up they go before they step on a platform. Something moves and then the platform they are standing on ascends, and they enter a new room.
Something in his gut tells him this is the end of the line.
His footsteps are drowned out by the ones from his armored captors, but judging by the echo, they're in a pretty big room.
He's taken up smaller steps, and then, suddenly, his chains are gone.
Before he has time to retaliate, he's tossed against stone, and then here's the rumble of something shutting.
"We are sorry." One said. "It's for the good of the village."
"That's bullshit!" He snaps at them, but his response his lost when the stone clashes against stone and he feels it grow dark.
His fear grows. He needs to act now.
He's able to pull his blindfold off with his newly freed hands, and with what little light there is he's able to make out that he's in some kind of round coffin. He pushes angrily against the sealed opening, desperate to get out.
In the far distance something moves the earth. He figure's it's the platform going back down again. Trying to shake his prison coincides with the tremor, and rock begins to crumble underneath the coffin. Hope growing, his movements grow more violent, and then, with a crack, the hollowed, round stone breaks free of it's perch and rolls off whatever it's standing on.
It crashes against the ground and splits, sending him tumbling out, out into brighter light and he hits his head on stone.
Dazed from his one way trip to the floor, he lays there and tries to recover, in no hurry because he doubts those assholes will come back.
He rolls onto his back, staring up at where he is. It's a large, cylinder shaped chamber, towering high above him. Torches on the spiral staircase leading up and windows at the top provide his eyesight some light. There's also something hanging at the top that he can't make out what it is.
Lining the walls are other round, stone coffins, several are open, but most are closed. He feels sick to his stomach thinking about what's in them.
How many have been sacrificed in this ritual he'd gotten himself roped into?
His headache clears up enough for him to stagger to his feet and try to come up with a way out. The only way into the temple, safely, at least, is sealed off with a slab of stone. He runs a hand through his white hair and decides there's nowhere left to go but up.
One ladder on the other end of the room leads to a platform lined with more tombs, and the other leads to the winding staircase, and, while he's getting so very sick of stairs, it's all he's got going for right now.
He swiftly climbs the ladder, rather fit for his young age, and starts up the spiral path.
The air smells fresher than it should, especially for a room like this, and he finds himself hoping for a broken window available at the top.
A dead end eventually comes in his path, but a chain hanging from it allows him to continue on his way.
As he nears the top, he hears the faint creaking of metal for some reason. And he feels a draft. Picking up the pace he reaches the top of the pathway. The stone further ahead of him had given way, but fortunately to his right is a broken window within his reach.
A look to his left has him freeze solid.
What is hanging from the ceiling is a cage, spiked and warding off anybody who dare came near it, but that isn't what stops him.
There's a small figure inside, with pale skin and a clean, almost glowing, white dress. He wonders if she's also apart of the ritual.
He should keep going, out that broken window behind him, but he can't leave a victim of this screwed up tradition here.
"Hello?" He calls out.
The figure in white moves, and then green and red clash, meet, hold and he's given such a look of desperation and he now knows that he can't leave her down here.
"I-I'll get you out!" He promises, before turning to the window and climbing out.
He's never been more grateful to see the sun, but he has a task at hand. He needs to find a way to lower the cage. The roof of the temple is just below him, so he drops down and circles the outside of the chamber.
Another broken window presents itself, just beyond the broken part of the pathway. He climbs through back into the room and onto the other platform. There's a switch by the wall, which he pulls.
Gears and cogs he can't see start to move and the cage starts to descend. Sighing in relief, he climbs back out the window, through the other one and starts on his way back down.
The cage doesn't make it all the way down to the ground, but he know's he's cleared the biggest obstacle thus far. The girl inside looks hopefuly, and rather frightened still.
"Just hang on!" He tells her, his voice echoing loudly in the chamber. He crosses the room under her cage, trying to figure out a way to reach the lock and free her.
He eyes the other ladder, and follows that to the other platform and how close it got to where the cage hung. Moving quickly he climbs the other ladder and travels down the path until he's level with the top of the cage.
He get's a running start and leaps onto the roof of the metal prison.
The chain holding it breaks under their combined weight and it goes crashing to the floor, throwing him off.
He's sick of getting intimate with the floor, and sits up once his head clears to find the cage door is open.
The girl stepping out of it is barefoot, with pale blonde hair and probably no older than he is. She crosses the room to where he's sitting and watching her with a raised eyebrow.
Her mouth open and gibberish he can't understand comes out of her mouth, but it's questioning and he can guess.
"What are you here for?" He asks her. "Were you being sacrificed too?"
She looks at him, equally confused, and crouches to his level. He meets her green eyes and study's her as she examines him too. She says something else he can't understand.
Neither notice the ceiling beginning to drip shadows and darkness like ink. He doesn't move at all until she's eveloped in shapeless shadows and suddenly dragged away from him.
He moves, but can't outrun what ever that shadowy figure is. The girl cries out as she's pulled into a dark vortex in the stone ground, slowly sinking inside.
His hand grabs hers and yanks her free from the dark quicksand. The being looks almost human like, but it's shape is distorting, not menacing looking, but the threat of it's existance is clear.
He pulls the girl out of he vortex's reach as the being emerges again, he focuses.
A flash of light engulfs his arm and he charges at it, leaping into the air and cutting it down.
He turns around, and can't blame the girl for staring at his hand with wide, almost frightened eyes.
Or rather, the blade that was once his hand.
"They sacrifice people like me down at my village." He tells her, though he knows it's futile. "When they reach the age of thirteen, once a year, one disappears, and we never see them again..."
And his parents had tried to hide it all their lives, they'd known what was to happen to a little scythe weapon like him somehow. But they still found out...
The girl says something else, and extends a hand, which he takes and grasps firmly with the hand that was once a blade.
"Let's get out of here."
She pulls him in the opposite direction when he tries to take the route up the spiral pathway out, back towards the sealed door.
He opens his mouth to tell her it's useless, but then her hand touches the stone and it flashes bright green.
And then it slides up and allows them out.
He stares, and the only thing she offers him is a smile.
"I think I might get used to having you around."
It was made clear earlier that there would be plenty of miscommunications between them, but somehow she get's the gist of it and giggles softly.
He takes her hand again, pulling her down the hallway to where the moving platform was earlier. There's a pathway around the chasm, leading to an arching entry way and to the outside.
They carefully skirt around the wide pit and to this doorway, straight outside, where he's met with a bridge. It crosses the turbulent sea below them and to another looming structure, different than the temple where sacrifices are left to die.
As they cross he decides it's a good idea to keep holding her hand, for the stone, weakened by salt water and rain and other elements, gives way under them about halfway across.
In the rush of adrenaline he tightens his hold on her hand and manages to pull her up before she's left dangling for too long. She murmurs something in her foreign tongue and they keep moving.
In the other structure it's darker, and a long corridor meets them, lit by various torches every few arches.
He and the girl end up sitting to the side of it, before they make the long trek down the crumbling rock hallway.
He absentmindedly fiddles with his red tunic, having it harden slightly from the drying salt water he was sprayed with who-know's-how-many-hours ago.
For about two minutes there's silence, before the girl, who'd been staring down the corridor, spoke again in her tongue, saying one word which Soul misses.
He let's out the universely accepted noise of confusion. She repeats her word.
"Maka."
"Maka?"
She nods, and points to herself. "Maka."
He can't help but crack a grin, and points to himself.
"Soul."
"Soul." She nods in understanding.
He chuckles, and stands. His hand takes hers and they walk down the long, dark corridor.