{Fallen Angel} {Risen Demon} [SoMa]

Chapter Two

"Hey, Maka," he calls through the door. "You ready?"

"Almost! Just getting Lu ready!" she returns, and he opens the door to find her crouched down and pulling a sundress over his daughter's head. "Are Chris and Felix ready?"

"They are," he nods his head, resting his hand on the small of her back. "We're ready to go."

"Towels and change of clothes?" she asks, rummaging around her daughter's closet. "Lucy, where are your shoes?"

"I dunno," the white haired girl chirps, sitting down on her bed to look at her feet and splay her toes.

"Ugh," Maka groans, sending her daughter a glare. "Where did you take them off last?"

"I think in Felix's room," Lucy answers, kicking her feet.

"Then go-"

"I'll go check," Soul cuts her off, taking his daughter's hand to pull her out of the room. "Look under her bed."

Maka takes a deep breath and shifts through the mess that was her youngest child's room to look under the bed.

She nearly screams in anger. Did Lucy never listen? Did she ever clean her room, or did she shove it all under here? Why couldn't she listen at least once?

And there, amidst the mess, are her two pink flip flops, one of them shoved under some dirty shorts and the other dangerously close to something that looked like a melted candy stash.

"Lucy!" Maka shrieks, and her tiny feet come pounding down the hall and into her own room.

"You found them!" she chirps, reaching out to take them, but Maka holds them out of her reach.

"Lucy, tell me why it's a mess under your bed and you have food in your room," Maka commands, and her daughter's smile fades slowly.

"Maka, we need to go. We can handle this later," Soul speaks up from the hallway, peering at the two most important girls in his life.

"Soul, you let her get away with everything," Maka protests, frowning at him. "She needs to listen."

"She does," Soul argues, stepping toward her and taking the shoes from her grip. "She just slips up sometimes."

"Some... Sometimes?" Maka gasps, her hands resting on her hips. "Try most of the time. She never listens to me. Look at this room. It's filthy, and I told her to clean yesterday. There's clothes and food, and you know we don't let them have food in their rooms, and toys shoved under her bed, and her closet's a wreck."

"Maka, do you really want to start this right now?" his voice is soft, deceptively quiet.

She snaps her mouth shut and looks down to her red eyed daughter, who was pressing her nose into Soul's leg. Her gaze flickers back up to him and then she looks away.

"I thought so," he says, his voice still soft and dangerous. "We'll talk when we get home. After they've gone to sleep."

He glances down to his daughter and looks back up to his wife. She nods and storms past him, fuming.

He always let them get away with anything. He never disciplined them, and he was so against spanking them that she could never fuss at them for doing bad things.

He always took their sides. Only one in the entire four years of their children's lives had Soul gotten truly mad at Lucy and yelled at her. She had gone crying to Momma, but Momma wasn't having any of it either.

Other than that one time, Soul let them get away with murder. Chris rarely got in trouble, and Felix even thinking about being troublesome was a rarity.