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"What I said during the party was the truth," Medusa says, smiling. "I need you."
Stein's not bad at knowing lies when he hears them. And he's beginning to think he knows her lies better than anyone, now that he's seen a bit of what's beneath her facade. Medusa's smile now is the most honest he's seen from her, even with blood dripping down her lip and snakes dancing around her, the danger obvious even if he ignores the oppressive feel of her wavelength.
"Why don't you come away with me? We'll make a better world than this, together."
Stein pauses, considering possible angles of attack. Medusa's smile curves wider. Still honest, mostly, but—
Spirit's voice pipes up. "Stein, you know you can't." And that makes him really stop to consider it, because the worried tone of Spirit's voice—and the fact that he felt the need to mention it at all—means that he could. He could give in and walk off with Medusa. There's no one to stop him right now.
Still. Just because it's technically a possibility doesn't mean it's a realistic one. "No thanks. I'm perfectly happy at Shibusen."
Medusa's laughter echoes through the tunnel before he even finishes the sentence. "I'm not sure that could have sounded less convincing if you were trying."
Stein's teeth grate, mostly because she's right. "And you think you can offer me better?"
"You know I can offer you better."
Stein's grip tightens. "You're no god. You're not righteous."
"Do you truly believe Shinigami is the paragon of righteousness?"
That's easy to answer. "Yes."
Medusa snorts. "You only think that because it makes it easier for you to follow orders."
Stein is silent.
"Shibusen is not unquestionably right, Stein. They just keep things the same. Is that good or bad?" She shrugs dramatically. "Mostly, it's boring. You think so too, don't you?"
Stein doesn't answer that either. "And you think you can do better?"
"I think the world can do better. It just needs a catalyst."
As if on cue, at that moment something snaps. It takes Stein too long to realize that it's nothing in him or in front of him, but something further away, down the tunnel. The children have failed; the kishin is awake. He can feel its horrific wavelength of insanity already, creeping along his skin, sinking into his mind like water pouring into a canyon.
Medusa's laughing. Her grin is too wide, almost hideous, but her blood-damp skin and the light of victory crossing her face is something else.
She's also open, more than she has been at any point in their fight so far. He lunges at the opportunity, swinging his blade widely, but he's too slow and she's too far away. She gets her guard back up and easily blocks with her arrows. "You can't stop it now, Stein. Don't you want to be a part of it?"
They've lost. He has lost—lost something, at least. He doesn't know if she means a part of her plans, a part of the world, or a part of the insanity itself. But either way he knows his answer. He disengages. "Yes."
Spirit frantically transforms back to human form and grabs him by the front of his shirt. "Stein, you can't!" But before Stein can even open his mouth to reply, Medusa's arrows are at Spirit's neck, ready to kill him in an instant. Spirit's eyes meet his, pleadingly. Medusa looks on blandly from over his shoulder.
"Senpai, I think you should probably stay in weapon form," Stein says eventually.
Spirit scowls and stares for a moment longer, and Medusa's arrows slide in slowly, the points drawing trickles of blood from his neck. Stein's fingers twitch, jealous. Finally Spirit gives up his soulful look and releases Stein. "Fine," He says flatly, and transforms back. Stein catches him with a smooth swing.
"Taking him with us?" Medusa's eyebrows quirk slightly.
"You'd like a chance to do experiments with a Deathscythe," Stein says, not a question. "...And I might be willing to let you have a turn." A laugh bubbles up from his throat, and he thinks he can feel Spirit shudder in his hands. His chest swells with strong feeling. A sense of betrayal?
No. He's always wanted this. Anticipation.
They both look up instinctively at a clash of wavelength far above them.
"Shinigami already." Medusa frowns at the tunnel ceiling. "Damn that werewolf. It hasn't been an hour yet." She shakes her head. "We should make our escape while Shinigami is distracted by the kishin."
"Running away so soon?" Stein snipes, slinging Spirit across his shoulders and grinning.
Medusa just smiles. "There's much more to do, I promise. This was only the first step. But our work here is done." She banishes the circle of arrows around them with a wave of her hand and turns to the entrance of the tunnel.
Stein stares for a moment. He doesn't know what the kishin will do. He has no idea what Medusa has planned, past this moment.
He wants to see it.
He follows her out of Death City.
"I'll have to regroup with Eruka and the others later," Medusa says as she leads him into a house. Walking through the door, he can feel her magic permeating the place. Interesting. "The blood is drying on your nice outfit. Why don't you show Deathscythe to his room?" she says, incongruously sweetly. Stein can still feel the deep wounds she inflicted oozing when he moves. The room she means is clearly the one at the end of the hallway, with a visible heavy lock.
It's no less than he expected.
"Stein," Spirit says, low and urgent, as they walk down the hall away from Medusa. "You can't be serious about this. It's just a trick, right?"
Stein forces his expression to go flat as he sets Spirit down in the room and watches him shift back to human form. "I'll talk to you later, senpai."
"Stein!" Spirit yells, and reaches for him, but Stein shuts the door on him. The lock snaps shuts with a tingle of magic along with the metallic clang. It's a sound of finality, that reminds him what he's doing. The kishin's wavelength is no longer close, no longer a heavy weight in his head, but his own madness has risen to meet it. He can't turn back now. He can't help laughing as he returns down the hall.
Medusa presents him with some basic surgical supplies and guides him to another room. "Would you like some help patching yourself up?"
"No." He takes the supplies.
She smiles at him. "Then can I watch you work?"
A frisson of something shoots through Stein at that. "If you don't have anything better to do. Shouldn't you tend to your own injuries? You weren't that good," he says, mouth quirking.
"I wonder," Medusa hums, holding up a hand to inspect her nails. "A gorgon body works a bit differently." And indeed, as he looks at her, he can see what's left of the blood on her skin fading or flaking off. Some of her wounds are still visible, but they don't look fresh.
He wants to freshen them, to open her up where he can watch how it works. But she's right, he should tend to himself first.
He strips off his coat and shirt, ripping off half-formed scabs as he does so. The wounds start seeping again, and he cleans the worst of the blood off.
"Mmm, very nice."
He glances over at Medusa, who's looking with satisfaction at his bared torso. It's true that the wound on his abdomen where she drilled is worst, and won't sew cleanly. He'll leave that for last, and patch up the straight slices first. Medusa's arrows make clean wounds, more even than the sharpest blade.
He irrigates the worst of the cuts with disinfectant solution first. His hand stays steady, but breath catches in his mouth unconsciously. Then he remembers that he's not alone. His head snaps up to see Medusa watching his reactions closely from across the small room. Watching with pleasure, not horror or shock. Well, of course. What would he do with someone who, after he cut them, sewed themselves back up with skill and apparent pleasure? He must be a very interesting subject for her.
Stein's body feels warm and his head feels fuzzy, so he moves to clean the rest of his injures, cutting the dull glow of pain with the sharp sting of iodine.
The wound on his abdomen starts bleeding freely after he attends to it, and he presses some gauze to it to stop it before returning to his work. It's easy enough to sew up the deeper slashes, even with Medusa's eyes on him, watching every move of his hand. He's practiced at this. It's familiar. It's just repetitive motion. And while he's doing it he doesn't need him to think about what he's doing here under the eyes of a witch. What he's doing is immediate—he's just sewing himself up, as the pain throbs through his whole body. He pushes the needle through his skin at even intervals, pulling the edges of the wound closed with straight stitches.
When he finishes, and finally turns his attention to his abdominal wound, he realizes Medusa has risen and come over to him, gauze and bandages in hand. "Here. Even you can't wrap your own torso very well, I'm sure. Let me help." She smiles, the false way. "I am a nurse, after all."
Stein laughs bitterly. But she's already touching him, pulling his hand away and replacing the gauze, wrapping bandages around him to hold it in place. She has to get close to do it, her head tucked under his chin as she reaches around his chest. She still smells like blood.
She finishes, and trails her hands across the edges of her handiwork. "There," she hums.
Stein isn't sure how to respond. Then she slides her hand down the bare skin of his chest, back over the wound, and presses hard at the gauze and bandages with her nails, breaking the forming clots underneath and shooting new sharp pain through him.
His muscles twitch into action without consulting what's left of his mind and he shoves her back, pins her against the wall, growling. "I still want to dissect you, you know."
But his adrenaline rush is long since gone, the wavelength of madness has receded to a low hum, and his body hurts all over. For a second he's aware of what he's done, what he's doing—his weapon is down the hall in a locked room, and he's provoking a sadistic witch who would love to kill him and could any moment now. But no—she could have killed him even before he put his weapon down. He couldn't have pinned her like this unless she let him.
"Is that so?" She's just toying with him. For some reason that excites him. Or maybe its the pain. "But," she says, back to her concerned voice. "You should take it easy for the moment. You've lost a lot of blood."
"Then maybe you should take it easy on me," Stein counters, equally brightly and falsely.
"You don't want me to take it easy." Medusa's smile widens.
"You don't want me to either." He presses her against the wall harder, until he thinks he can feel the bones of her shoulders grinding under his hands.
"No," she says, pleased. "But you are still human. And we don't have to do everything tonight."
Stein's laughs again, and he can hear the frantic edge to it. "Right, I'm sure I'm no use to you this beaten down."
"I wouldn't say that," Medusa says, and reaches up between them. She pulls him even closer than he is already, pulls his head down, and Stein freezes, just like he did hours ago on the dance floor. It's a major tactical failure; it shouldn't be unexpected the second time. But it's still not familiar enough or he's still not crazy enough to react to this immediately. And this time there's no interruption before Medusa's lips meet his.
Kissing isn't something that Stein has ever felt a particular inclination for on it's own. This is different, though—the shock of it happening, the sudden intimacy with his enemy, the amount of danger underlying it, what it says about Medusa that she's doing it even with no one to see, the victory for her that it is—all that races through his head and makes his heart rate jump, makes his muscles tense without knowing what he wants to do. The feeling of the kiss itself is pleasant enough, but hardly the focus.
When she pulls away he realizes his grip on her shoulders has relaxed, he feels dizzy nearly to the point of incapacitation, and his vision is beginning to go black around the edges.
Medusa laughs at him. "Still human indeed. Let's get you to bed," she lilts.
He doesn't remember getting to another room, or moving to a bed. He does remember the bedroom door closing, and wondering as his consciousness fades if there's a lock on it, too.