He couldn't remember the last hours, perhaps even the entire last day. He knew that time had passed, but he held no recollection of the events, his hands resting limply on the keyboard of his computer. The screen was as blank as his mind, the computer not powered on. There was something wet and sticky on his face, and he could see splashes of blood on his forearms; the rolled up cuffs of his lab coat were stained with the same red.
His hands were clean.
He couldn't sense another soul in the lab. He had lost track of the time that he had spent in front of his computer, his Soul Perception the only thing that he focused on. He had long since locked away any bothersome emotions, letting his wavelength quest outwards in a vicious cycle of hope followed by despair that he pointedly suppressed.
Had he killed Marie?
His gaze fell to his hands, the lack of blood on them finally driving him to his feet. He shed his lab coat as he walked, the article of clothing falling to the ground unceremoniously behind him. He moved from lab to lab, standing in the doorway of each and taking it in at a glance.
He found no signs of violence in any of them.
He found no bodies. There were no broken items, no discarded gloves covered in someone else's blood. There was no sign that there had been another person in the lab since his loss of memory. He took a deep breath, running a hand through his hair before cranking the screw in his head. Where could she be?
He hoped that it was not in the lab, hidden away from him somewhere by his madness.
He repeated his search, checking storage rooms and closets, moving with the speed that only the familiarity he had with the building could provide. The results were the same: he found no body hidden away; no blood stained the operating tables, no footprints in blood that would denote her attempts to escape.
Where was she?
Why were his hands clean? There was blood on his lab coat, his shirt, his face. He had to have been wearing gloves, yet he had found no trace of them. He had searched the trashcans, desperate to find them, and revealed nothing. It was as if whatever he had worn had broken down into is original parts, scattering into the air like so much dust.
Dust.
Ash.
Stein went at a run into the basement of the lab, finally seeing the signs of violence that he had been unable to find in the research labs- the blood that he had wanted to find, yet not wanted to see. He rounded the corner, coming into the room where the incinerator was, and stopped. A blonde haired woman lay in a pool of blood, her back to him, her hair covering her face.
A pair of bloody gloves lay near her.
There was no soul hovering in front of his eyes- no soul still attached to the body. He forced himself to move over to the blonde, and carefully rolled her onto her back. He sat back on his heels, ignoring the blood that was staining his shoes, as relief coursed through him.
While she superficially resembled the death scythe, it was not Marie dead and broken in front of him.
"Franken?"
Stein's head snapped up, Marie's voice echoing through the lab. He looked down at the body at his feet, and he acted without thinking. Dried blood stuck to the fabric of his shirt as he grabbed the corpse and shouldered it, opening the door to the incinerator.
"I'm sorry."
Without any more preamble he slid the corpse into the incinerator and closed the doors. He watched as the flames licked up as Marie's voice called his name out again. He looked at the blood on the floor, his mind spinning at how he could clean it before she found him.
Marie's scream pierced the air.
It was only then that he realized he had shed his lab coat in his search for her. He took the stairs from the basement two at a time and found her crumpled on the floor. The death scythe had fainted, and it brought a smirk to his face. He moved quickly past her and retrieved a syringe, filling it with a sedative as he returned to her. Quickly, efficiently, he injected it into her; picking her up he placed her on the couch and left to clean the mess before she could awaken.
Her world was spinning as she opened her eye, blinking several times before the memory of what happened surged through her.
"Franken!" she sat up with a small scream, her eye still unfocused before it fell on the meister, sitting calmly at his desk, typing.
"I'd lay back, Marie. You passed out, and may again if you move too quickly."
"You're… ok?" she said as she sat up anyway, bracing herself against the couch before laying back, her head swimming.
"I'm in perfect health, despite my smoking."
"That's not what I meant! I came in and I found your lab coat! It was covered in blood, and I didn't see you and you didn't answer me when I called! I was so worried!" It all came out in a rush and Marie clapped her hands over her mouth to silence the flood of words.
Stein turned to her and twisted the screw in his head. "I don't understand why you would worry. You know that no one approaches the lab without my being aware of it. I would not be caught unawares." While not entirely the truth, it seemed to calm the woman down a bit and she drew her knees up to her chest.
"Where did the blood come from?" Marie's words were quiet and Stein was silent a long minute. She mistook the true meaning of the silence and he watched as tears slipped down her cheek.
A moment later she was on her knees in front of him, tears streaming down her cheek as she laid her head on his knees. He froze, his arms up and away from the death scythe.
"I won't leave again. I can't let you hurt yourself again."
He had no response as he felt her wavelength soothing his frazzled nerves. He could tell her the truth; let her know that he had… killed… someone that looked similar to her in his madness. Or, as he decided, he could simply not correct her assumption.
If it meant that he gained a new scar that night after she went to bed, so be it. With a sigh he let his arms relax, one hand awkwardly patting her back.
"I'll be fine."
"And I'll be here to make sure of that." Even through the tears she managed a smile, standing and wiping the liquid away with her shirt sleeve. "I must look terrible now, excuse me."
Stein had to hide a smirk. She had smeared her makeup terribly. She walked out of the room and he gave a small sigh of something akin to relief. He turned to his computer and checked the list of experiments he had already performed on himself.
Perhaps he would find something useful with the latest one- and give himself a believable enough scar in the process. He mentally checked off his abdomen, deciding his chest would be the best choice as Marie had felt his abdomen when she hugged him. He felt something rush through his system as he remembered the motion, and decided that he also needed scans of his own brain and readings of his chemical levels.
A/N: I don't own Soul Eater. I hope you've enjoyed this.