Hi Soul Eater fandom. This is my psychobabble, and I hope you enjoy it. Based off episode 41...very loosely.
Drabble made completely of monosyllabic words :D (It was a bitch to write, and I apologize if it sounds awkward as fuck~)
jux·ta·po·si·tion
[juhk-stuh-puh-zish-uhn]
–noun
an act or instance of placing close together or side by side, esp. for comparison or contrast.
...
Tell me that I'm not sick.
He's small and sweet and his eyes are wide. Big. Green. When he looks at him, Stein sees a ghost. White and pale and he might as well be dead. The look on his face is blank. Stein can close to see through him.
You're sick. The boy breathes out. Soft and bland, just like the rest of him. He tries to keep him safe. He has to keep Stein sane. This is the truth. Please look at it. And green eyes hide, locked up tight in the cell of their lids.
The fog is thick. He can't find his way home. But is his lab where he should be…?
You know where you need to go. You know the right choice. Just go and find it. But the clouds are fat and dark and they choke so much. He can't even tell which way is up or down, so how does he know right from wrong?
He waits for you, Stein. He's your friend. You know that. And a ten-year-old boy doesn't need to preach to him. After all of these years, Stein knows his friends from his foes. He knows he can trust that red-haired fool more than he can trust any one else. You have to go back for him. For all of them.
They are one in the same. This child and the sick man he speaks to. Stein was born mad, that much is clear, but this boy seems to know all of the right words, he tells the man what he needs to hear and not a thing more. Were they ever one? Stein with his points and thread and stitch-by-stitch the same as this bright young saint?
I know, is all that the man can sob. The boy's face shows not a thing.
Then why are you still here?
Stein is lost. Sad and lost and sick. By now he knows what he should do, but he does not know how he can do it. It's hard for him to see an inch in front of his face, so how can he find a way out?
I don't…
Why, Stein? Why have you not gone yet? Leave! Go!
His head hurts. The man's. It aches and burns and the rring, ring, ring of the mad plays in his skull. The boy screams and screams and yells and screams.
A knife to the gut and the screams shush. The boy makes not a sound with a blade shoved in his skin.
You will wish that you had not done this, he says. Calm as he is. Blood leaks from him, and he frowns. He's sad, to be frank. He wished for the man to keep a hold on what is sane, and not sink down in the black dark hole that the small snake girl carved for him and craves for him.
The shank rips through flesh, bit by bit. Guts pool out. Stein's green eyes are wide and filled with a mad sort of joy. The boy's face is still the dead ghost that Stein holds dear from his youth. He'd lived so long as a blank page and when he first sees red in its bright raw grace, he is in love. A light is shined on him, and he does not look back. He does not look to that young blank boy not once more.
Not until he sees him on this day. In this thick fog. And coats him in red paint.
(Don't be kind, the old Stein says, we both know that this is blood.)
The small Stein smiles. Soft and sweet, but it's still there. Cracked and crazed and his twin is just so proud of him.
He is a beast. Sick is what flows through his veins. He's ill, and he knows it.
The boy holds his guts in his small hands with love and care, eyes glazed over in want and need, and he knows this now as well.