Author's Note: it's been a headcanon of mine since high school (when i got into Soul Eater in the first place) that Stein is trans, and it's basically canon that Crona is nonbinary. both of those things helped me come out; this fic is basically my having typed out my long-enduring thoughts on the subject. crossposted on AO3 at /works/19252291.
CW for: references to human and animal experimentation, talk of secondary sex characteristics on something to be "fixed," non-explicit dysphoria, top surgery, mentions of surgery without anesthesia, mentions of hospitals/anesthesia/non-explicit medical stuff, unorthodox medical practices, canon self-experimentation and vivisection, possibly cissexist language, Trans Jealousy™, cigarettes/smoking, references to asexuality/aromanticism as "peculiarities"
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"The world to me was a secret, which I desired to divine..."
Franken Stein renames himself at age eight, right after burning straight through a book.
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Early on in life, he looks in the mirror and thinks: wrong. this should not be there. He sits in the library and reads books on anatomy, trying to decide how it could be fixed.
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His parents buy him a binding undershirt. He practices wearing it, walking in it. He wears it to his first day at the DWMA, and no one knows that under it he isn't quite as he looks.
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Experiments on animals are easy, but it feels strange to hurt them. Hurting humans, though? Not nearly as bad. Franken knows all too well the depths of cruelty humans can sink to- he talks to himself enough to know- and, therefore, they deserve pain.
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Spirit Albarn is a complete idiot, but they fight well together. Franken rearranges his toes one night, and puts them back a week later.
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He smokes cigarettes now, even though they aren't allowed at the Academy.
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Franken Stein cuts his chest open in a revolutionary experimental treatment for other men like him. If it works-
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The Reaper himself yells at him, and he tries to look properly cowed. Franken Stein tries again, this time with Lord Death supervising and Spirit in the next room. His skin is anesthetized.
The procedure works this time. He is lighter, lighter than air.
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Now that the most pressing worry is out of the way, Franken experiments on himself even more. If he drills into his own head, sticks a bolt in there, could he make himself smarter? Improve his memory?
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He goes to a hospital to get his uterus removed. Thankfully, that's a process that exists already, although it's usually only used on women. He's under full anesthesia, and wakes up loopy. A nurse pulls him aside, after, to thank him personally for his contributions to medicine, and he can barely respond. They even have a new word for people like him: transgender.
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Spirit gets married. Franken is married to his research. Still, he owes Death a favor.
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It's fifteen years before the Reaper collects.
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He'd forgotten how fun it could be to experiment on other people, even harmless social experiments like these. The children are bright and almost clever; it almost hurts his (artificial) heart to toy with them. But hey, he's got tenure now.
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Crona nods their little pink head. "When I was little, my gender would change and I didn't know how to deal with that. Lady Medusa did a ritual to fix it, so my body changes too."
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Franken almost caves in to Medusa. What if she can fix the rest of him? His hair, his face-shape, his voice?
But then again: if the world ends, he won't be able to experiment anymore. And he's a man of science.
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Marie is like no woman he's met before. Mostly because he's now actually attracted to her, romantically speaking, which is unusual. He's been sexually attracted to plenty of people, but how he feels about her is new and slightly disturbing. Once he figures out what it is, he takes notes, compares his interactions with her to those with past girlfriends.
She knows about him, of course. His medical work is world-famous.
She knows about him, and he explains to her later about how confusing it is to like her, and she doesn't deride him or scoff like he expects her to. Instead, she tells him that she isn't sexually attracted to anyone, but does desire romance. She's pretty much the inverse of his own peculiarities, and maybe that's why they work so well together.
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"Does my eye bother you?'
"What? No! Of course not!"
"That why would your scars bother me?"
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Franken Stein helps to save the world, not long before his thirty-third birthday. Spirit takes him out, to one of the sleazy little bars he evidently likes to frequent. They pick out a new book series for Maka, and buy her all of them.
She owns the books already, but thanks them anyway.
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There's a mage- not technically a witch, still following the laws- under contract with the DWMA now, working with Stein on his latest medical advances. Stein's not much of a fan of magic users, but they're still people too, he supposes. Orpheus isn't bad to work with, at least, and his hands don't shake the way Franken's do now.
It's a lingering aftereffect of Medusa's possession, along with the nightmares. Maybe he'll never be free of it, but hell, he's a man of science. He'll figure something out.
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They talk to Crona, who was only five when the ritual was done but remembers some of it. They take blood samples from both Crona and from Ragnarok. After two years of experimenting, on themselves and (with permission) on other people, Franken Stein injects the first successful batch of soluable testosterone into his leg.
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He's thirty-six and hailed in, like, every scientific magazine ever. He's thirty-eight and Death himself is letting him keep a lab in the DWMA basement. He's forty-two and rich from patents, working in the school on a volunteer basis and donating to make sure every student who wants to attend can do so.
After Marie pesters him about it for a full decade, he invents a cigarette that won't hurt him but will still calm his nerves when he needs it, because screw quitting. It quickly becomes a controlled substance throughout most of the world- man, growing up has made him hate capitalism- but he still creates synthetic tobacco in his private lab.
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He's fifty, and there's a new Kishin on the loose. Thanks to his experiments, though, they all have the power to stop it before it can do so much as fell a single wall.
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The new-and-improved testosterone formula, if he plays this right, will only require one dose per year. He won't test it on himself quite yet, but the new Reaper (and won't it be strange calling Kid "Death") has created remarkably lifelike, though not sentient, dummies for the injections.
It takes five more years, and Marie has to remind him and Orpheus to do things like eat and sleep, but eventually it works.
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Why on earth would he die in battle? Nope, none of that. He's sixty and he's a man of science.
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Spirit dies in battle, to another wannabe demon. Franken attends the funeral, watches Maka and her mother; one crying, one stone-faced. Which does which, it matters not. Spirit was beloved, and was his friend after all.
"Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it."
And it continues, on and on.
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But him, he dies at home in his nineties, Marie by his side, hundreds of students revering him and millions across the world feeling as though they're in his debt for the medical miracles he's brought them. This is his legacy.
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i am not affiliated with Atsushi Okubo, Square Enix, Yen Press, Gangan Comics, Funimation, or any other publishers/creators of Soul Eater. this is a work of fanfiction.