Fic: "Praxis" (Soul Eater, Kid/Maka)
Jul. 5th, 2012 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terajkTitle: Praxis
Rating: PG
Fandom: Soul Eater
Ship: Beelzebub/Kid/Maka
Word count: ~870 (The longest Soul Eater fic I've ever written! Go, me!)
Summary: A girl, a god, and his skateboard.
Author’s Note: For my “vehicular” square for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
kink_bingo
Contains: Nothing explicit, but there are underage characters in kinky situations.
Also contains: MAJOR SPOILERS for chapter 63 of the manga.
Soul is such a jerk sometimes.
Maka knows he can’t train as long as she can--she knows this, no matter what he says--but it’s like he doesn’t even care about learning to fly. And why should he? He’s already become a Death Scythe--why help her do something she wants? She always feels his soul flickering as they soar through the air, shifting like tectonic plates at top speed. Then today he ditches practice altogether to go with Blackā Star to some dumb anime convention. And he even invited her with “I know you’re a total nerd and all, so...” His goddamn nerve.
She has no time for stupid things, for him. That’s why she’s in the library reading about aerodynamics, trying not to think about Soul being an idiot. Or how little sense this book makes. Or Gundam.
But there are lots of distractions when you’re hard at work not thinking of things, and out of the corner of her eye she sees a hand, frozen in midair; then it jerks away. Kid does that, sometimes, reaches out to smooth a wrinkle in your shirt or brush your hair back. At first it was annoying being treated like some random object instead of a person, but then Patty told her she had it backwards. (“It means he’s comfortable around you,” she’d said. “Like a hug, except not really.”) It barely surprises her anymore.
What does surprise her is when he scoffs and says, “Why did Father allow that book in this library? It’s useless.”
“I like it,” Maka says.
“A book can’t teach you to fly using Soul Resonance,” Kid says, matter-of-factly. “Praxis is the only way.”
“You sound like Professor Stein. And besides, I can’t practice flying without Soul.”
“Really?” he says, sounding oddly like his father.
***
“The desert is much better--there’s more space,” Kid says, “but walking there would take too long. Besides, human physiology is...what it is. So Liz and Patty tell me.”
“Uh-huh.” They’re standing on top of a hill on the edge of the city; Maka chews her lip, ponders the horizon, this plan. She isn’t sure how a rocket-powered skateboard--a machine--will help her match soul wavelengths to fly; after all, she’s ridden Beelzebub with Kid on missions before and it’s nothing like--
Wait.
Maka closes her eyes, focuses her thoughts on the skateboard. When she opens them again, there’s a pulse in the air, a flicker of a candle flame. A barely-perceptible soul. “Wow,” she breathes.
Kid gestures forward, steps on behind her.
“Do I...ask it permission?” Maka asks, feeling stupid.
“If you want.”
Beelzebub, can we fly? The pulse flattens out, opens up. Beelzebub seems...calm. (Of course. Of course Kid’s skateboard would be calm.) She’ll have to forget about Soul, untangle the yarn-ball of frustration and anxiety in the pit of her stomach if she wants to resonate with it properly. Again, a deep breath. Wings unfolding like flower petals.
“Shall I hold onto you somehow?” asks Kid suddenly.
“If you want,” Maka says. With Kid’s hands around her waist, the wings in her head beat once, slow.
She’s going up and her foot almost slips, awkward on wood that doesn’t yield. She’s used to pliable bodies, Soul an extension of her arm. Kid holds her tighter. The pulse flares suddenly. Here I am. Right here. The wings beat and beat and beat (like drums, the swelling chords of Soul’s piano), as Beelzebub’s soul-flicker--a harpstring now, shuddering, plucked by an invisible hand--keeps time. Maka hears the rockets, feels them under her feet, and she suddenly wants to laugh at how silly she’s been, how ridiculous not to know until now that Beelzebub is alive. It caresses her feet (Kid’s hands around her waist), lifts her up and keeps her safe, purrs throughout her body like Blair asleep on her chest. It’s so wonderful that she asks Kid if he’s doing something, if he’s cheating, because she’s not as strong as he is and surely she’s not making this happen on her own.
“What? No. You’re doing beautifully, Maka. Should I let go?”
Should she analyze that sentence? (“What?” What does that mean? Is there something she should do because Liz and Patty aren’t here and if something happens and he has a freakout she could fall and she really doesn’t want to die here, on the edge of town.) “No,” she says.
“Maka!” They’re plunging now because she let Beelzebub go (die on the edge of town), and she can’t find the string, can’t find the string in the noise. Her heart thumps and thumps and thumps.
There it is.
It’s open, welcomes her with open arms as if she never left, and she sees now she needs to trust it. Trust him. Trust herself most of all.
She can fly.
She has flown.
She will fly.
She and Soul will fly.
No, no. They’re flying now, the three of them, together. And she wants to keep flying with them--with him--for hours and hours and hours.
“Kid? Are you getting tired?”
“Not at all. Are you?”
“Never,” she says, and laughs as they go up and up and up.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-06 02:30 am (UTC)Beezlebub is so neat and I wish that there were more fics about it. I love your take on it, and your descriptions of how Maka experiences her soul perception and soul resonance, and the little bit at the beginning about Kid's space-bubble violations. This is so perfect!
Baaaaaaabbling
Date: 2012-07-07 12:46 am (UTC)Beelzebub is TOTALLY neat! I love that Ohkubo doesn't give us a lot of information about it, but, as you say, there should be more fics about it, not least of all because there's so much room to play in. Although, if Kid doesn't keep many things in his pockets so as not to be unbalanced, then surely he can't keep just one skateboard in his body? What other stuff has he got in there? (That drafting table he pulled out of nowhere from chapter 12 was probably in his other hand.) Yes, I did think about this too hard. Why do you ask?
Actually, your descriptions of Beelzebub are very influential! When you described it as "itching to come out" of Kid's hand I was like: "Wait. WAIT OMG" and I loved it. And also, Kid saying that Beelzebub lives in his hand. And I rolled all of that around in my head for a while.
your descriptions of how Maka experiences her soul perception and soul resonance,
EEEEE! This was my first time writing Maka, and I've been intimidated about writing her, as she is basically an ordinary high school student with awesome powers, if that makes sense. Where she's fabulous and flawed like, well, a person. Her relationship with her father (I had/have a similar one with my dad, although mine may have been/be more ambivalent, but I'll have to poke at it and I LOVE HER. Of course, I also LOVE HER FATHER, I am sorry, Maka!), and with Soul, and her perfectionism/crises of confidence ("I'm not as strong as Black*Star or Kid") are all things I love, but could get her read as Huge Annoying Bitch. Which she's not. (Also, um, Ohkubo? How can you make such an awesome female character--actually, lots of awesome female characters--and then do such dumb sexist things? The hell?) I think I'm much less intimidated about writing Maka now :)
the little bit at the beginning about Kid's space-bubble violations.
How do you always single out the things I'm the least confident about for compliments? HOW?
Okay, so, I was like: "Well, since I'm planning on writing Soul Eater everything for
Like, is asymmetry just Wrong or is there an element of "if I don't keep everything perfect, Bad Things will happen"? If so, what Bad Things are they? (I think slowly, OK?) So I reread Kid's complete failures of spoons, which both happen when people are in serious danger. And "the humans I'm supposed to look after are in danger" seems to be a part of it, because he is so worried about the Humans in Danger that he can't go back to check on the stuff he wants to check on, but he's also unable to check on/rescue the humans in danger, and it makes total sense to me that he'd be frozen when faced with something he's especially afraid of, even if dealing with said thing would fix the damn problem. (Maybe because
my blood is blackI do this kind of thing ALL. THE. TIME. Even as I know it's the least helpful thing ever.)But! Kid's disability is complex and I can see elements of "this is just Wrong" and also "LOOK AT THIS FUCKING THING YOU GUYS IT IS AMAZING!" and other things! AND in your stories I loved your descriptions of Kid ticcing, and brushing lint off of Liz's thigh, and then I was all like: "Lemme look up OCD and ticcing!" (oh, God, I am a NERRRRRD) and then a bunch of things combined in my head, even as I was sure I was misunderstanding it all. And one of these things is my indomitable love of cuddling.
So, yeah, that happened.
In conclusion, ♥ ♥ ♥ for you forever.
Re: Baaaaaaabbling
Date: 2012-07-07 10:40 pm (UTC)IKR?! Which is exactly why I love the way that his OCD is portrayed in canon. Because it works just. like. that. All the freakin' time.
Also, eeeee! You always give me such amazing compliments and I can never come up with anything to say in return other than asdfghjkl;asdfghjkl;. Thank you!!!
All of your SE fics are so perfect and amazing, though. I think that you have such amazing insight into the characters and and I love love love so much the way that you write them interacting with each other.
Re: Baaaaaaabbling
Date: 2012-07-08 11:50 pm (UTC)One of the features of my diagnosis is a fear of novelty. Whenever I read NT experts describe it I go: "I'm not like that at all." And then there was Crona and I went: "WAIT WAIT WAIT IS THIS FEAR OF NOVELTY BECAUSE DAMN I AM SO LIKE THIS." In my case it's a much milder form, but the shape is the same.
(I've heard of other disabled people experiencing this when listening to people with their disabilities describe things as opposed to non-disabled experts.)
All of your SE fics are so perfect and amazing, though. I think that you have such amazing insight into the characters and and I love love love so much the way that you write them interacting with each other.
SPEAKING OF AMAZING COMPLIMENTS!
I love putting characters together to see what would happen. (Crossovers are awesome.) I'm very interested in their interactions, especially if they trigger each other/bump into each other's insecurities just by existing but are friends anyway--or at least can't kill each other. ( Ranma 1/2 is full of characters doing this to each other all the time; also, When Kid and Black*Star went looking for Excalibur there were hearts in my eyes FOREVER, and not just because I love Excalibur.)
In fact, I have a really hard time writing Marie and Tsubaki, as they get along with an awful lot of people! (Bonus fact, Tsubaki's relationship that interests me the most is with Masamune.) I've been trying to put Kid and Ms. Marie together for forever and it's really hard, as they end up too sweet. So I keep poking and poking at them.Marie's temper! Threatening to expel students even though she does not have this power! Having only one eye! (I know, I know, I was desperate.) Kid being PISSED whenever someone harms humans or takes the power of life and death for themselves! Seriously, it would be easier to put either of them with Stein at this point.
So being complimented on something SO interesting to me/that's one of my favorite things to do is just EEEEEasdfghjkl;!!!!!