Father's Day
A Soul Eater fanfic by Haladflire65 (a.k.a. Resonance) - One-shot
Rating: T for implied gore and disturbing scenes.
Summary: Father's Day at Shibusen reminds Dr. Stein of a terrifying - but educational - childhood nightmare.
Notes: A fic I wrote after thinking about what kind of dad Stein might have had. It's just my imagining of a possible father of Dr. Stein...
So here we go.
Father's Day
Death the Kid was marching through the hall with a huge, wrapped, perfectly symmetrical box in his arms. Liz and Patti were at his side, Liz looking rather put off, Patti giggling, like always.
"Kid-kun. Where do you think you're going? You'll be late for class." Stein turned the screw in his head as they passed, earning a nervous laugh from Liz.
"Sorry, Professor, but Kid says that he has to visit his father..."
"Shinigami-sama? What for?"
"Something about a Father's Day gift... Sorry again, Professor!" Liz was dragged away by Kid, who was saying that they needed to be in perfect symmetry when they entered the Death Room.
Father's Day was today? Stein never bothered to think about these things. He glanced at the calendar as he walked into the classroom. Sure enough, a student had marked today's date with bold writing, a small doodle of a spectacled father.
For a moment, Stein felt as if all the air were being drained out of his lungs.
"Dr. Stein?"
Who's voice was that? Right. Maka Albarn.
"Yes?"
"The bell just rung..."
He was able to breathe again. But still, he had to take large gulps of oxygen before sitting down in his chair. He turned the screw again. Click, click, click. "Today we'll be dissecting a snake..."
For the first time, Stein found it difficult to concentrate on his favourite activity. Why were his damn fingers shaking? Subtle incisions that he normally perfomed with ease were suddenly impossible do do - instead of cutting out the heart of the snake, he severed the stomach. Snakes are hard to dissect... Their hearts and stomachs and lungs all look the same... A student, probably Tsubaki, called out his name. It startled him so much that he sliced through his finger instead of the spinal cord of the reptile.
More blood poured from the gash than Stein would have thought, and poor Tsubaki looked terrified. Waving away her apologies, Stein told the class to continue while he went to the infirmary. By the time he came back, after a fair amount of questions from Neigus and an unecessarily thick bandage around his index finger, the class was already beginning to disperse. Stein caught sight of Maka leaving with Soul.
"I thought we were going to take my bike out for a spin," the white-haired boy was grumbling.
"Just a minute, Soul! This isn't going to take long." Maka turned and saw Stein. "Oh, Professor, how's your hand?"
"Fine."
"Have you seen my papa, Professor?"
"Spirit?" Stein frowned. "I think he came out of the washroom by the nurse's office a few minutes ago. Why?"
Maka suddenly blushed a deep red. "I - um... uh..."
Soul, appropriately, butted in. "She's giving her dad a present."
"A present? For Spirit-Senpai?"
"Maka chop!" It was an instant K.O. for poor Soul.
As Stein turned from the kids and lit a cigarette, a thought suddenly crept into his head. What's it like to love your father? What's it like for your father to love you?
For as long as he could remember, Stein had managed not to think of that.
Curse Father's Day.
Taking a deep draught from his cigarette, Stein reached up and turned the screw again. Sighed. Furrowed his brow. Took off his glasses and polished them, even if they were spottless like always. Tried to preoccupy himself with other things. Frustrated, Stein unravelled the bandage that was wound around his finger, and used a remedy that always worked - he pressed his nail into the wound, as hard as he could. The fresh sliver of pain helped calm him, and at last, he felt a little more peaceful -
"Oi, Stein!"
Spirit seemed to float into Stein's field of view.
"Oh. Senpai."
Spirit was wearing that familiar ridiculous grin, and his eyes were in another world - Makaland, probably. "Ma~ka~ ! She... she..."
"Hm?" Stein raised his eyebrows.
"She gave me a gift!" Spirit twirled in a circle. He showed Stein his tie - it was then he noticed that it wasn't the usual black cross. Instead, it was a normal, quite a handsome tie, that was dark red - the same colour as Spirit's hair. "Isn't she sweet? My Ma~ka~ !"
"That's nice." Stein breathed out smoke in his trademark skull shape. "Very nice."
Spirit danced away.
Stein stripped of his sweater, looked down at the set of stitches runing down his lower torso, and remembered.
Franken Stein. Ten years old. A genius, a bully, a monster. He was superior to all. Every student, every teacher, every neighbour.
Franken Stein. He feared no one.
His own father was an exception. As an asipiring scientist, young Stein tended to fear what he didn't know. Since there was almost nothing he didn't know, he feared almost nothing.
What was his name?
Stein didn't know.
What did he look like?
Stein hadn't really seen him properly before. But he smoked. And wore glasses - roundish, rimless ones.
What did he do for a living?
Flowerpicking, maybe?
Stein was afraid of his father.
Stein's father hardly ever exited his room in the basement of their home. When he did, it was usually at night, either when it was too dark to see much or when little Stein was asleep. He talked to his son through an intercom - "Lock the doors." "Bring me a knife." - aproximately once a month or two.
This was the relationship between Stein and his father for the first ten years of the boy's life.
Everything changed in one autumn evening.
It was the night young Stein learned of the extreme dangers of sleeping. His habit of being an insomniac wouldn't be broken until Marie Mjolnir moved in with him, many years later.
Even as a child Stein never slept for more than a few hours every night. He was always poring over stolen textbooks for students twice his age; he was always studying, thiking, researching, perfecting his various techniques. The Soul Purge - he began to develop it after getting inspiration from a discarded note of his father's.
That night, though, Stein was feeling more tired than usual. An exam, combined with several scuffles at school, and another pathetic microwaved dinner, was enough to tire even the young sadist. He wanted to work on his Purge, as a failed one had cost him a bruised jaw that day, but his body refused to obey him.
The boy cllimbed into his bed for the first time in weeks. Usually he slept at his table, using a thick book as a pillow.
After some time Stein suddenly woke, feeling that he wanted to read something. Only, he found that he couldn't move. Confused, he twisted his head to one side; his eyes widened when he saw his arms and legs, bound to... a table?
"What the hell?"
As if to answer him, overhead lights were flicked on, momentarily blinding him. When his eyes adjusted to the light Stein made out a figure standing over him. Scraggly grey hair. Glasses. Green eyes behind them. That was all that he could see, for the person was wearing a surgical mask. Oddly enough, he was somehow grasping a cigarette through the mask, the smoke forming a halo around his head.
"Father?" Stein's voice came out, higher than usual.
Stein know that his father had just smiled. "Surprised you recognized me, shrimp."
"I... what... what are you doing?" For the first time, the notorious Franken Stein felt true fear.
"Now, that would be spoiling things." Latex gloves. Stein swallowed. "But I'll tell you anyway. Tonight you'll be part of a little experiment."
"E-experiment?"
"I've been watching you for a long time, Franken," Stein felt his stomach knot itself when this stranger called him by first name, "and I think you're pretty pathetic. You know why?"
Stein just shook his head.
"You have a desire to learn. To find out how things work. You crave knowledge. Like me."
Stein nodded.
"Yet you do nothing to fufill that hunger!" Suddenly his father's voice was rising, and Stein felt himself shake. "You do nothing!"
Why did he have to speak? "I do... I... read... all the time."
To his astonishment, his father... laughed. "That's exactly why I brought you here. To teach you someting very important."
"Important?"
Stein was terrified when his father began to cut a straight line through his shirt with a wicked-lookig surgical scalpel. All the way down from his collarbone to his stomach. His pale, skinny torso peeked out from beneath the fabric.
"You see, Franken, to learn, you must see everything for yourself. Have you ever tried experiments? Other than those stupid, prototyped versions at what they call a school? Have you? Have you ever thought of it that way?"
Stein shook his head. No, he hadn't. Sickeningly, it made sense. This was it! This was what he had been looking for! This was the way to learn... The real way to learn... Why hadn't he thought of it before? All this time, he'd just been reading rubbish written by long gone authors while he could've been finding out things for himself!
"That's what I do, Franken. It's my job. It's called... dissection."
Dissection, the dictionary inside Stein's head whispered. Carefully cutting up a body of an animal or human in order to examine it scientifically. Suddenly Stein realized what was in that jar behind his father - it was unmistakibly a humanoid brain, floating in the surrounding liquid like a giant, grotesque walnut, displayed like some disgusting trophy.
A scream tore from Stein's throat as he grasped what his father was going to do. The scalpel glinted cruelly, and his father chuckled.
"Don't worry. It won't kill you. I can put you back together easy - I've done this before..." A sigh, barely audible through the rushing in his ears. "Let's take a look inside you, shall we?"
Stein thought he would pass out, but he didn't. The pain of that foreign metal object cutting him open was unreal. After a while, after his screams had faded away to whimpers, after the table was covered in sticky crimson, Stein's father went and got something - a mirror.
"Look, Franken," his father held the mirror at an angle to his stomach. "see what you're made of."
Despite the strong urge to squeeze his eyes shut, Stein obeyed.
Through his hazy vision, he saw curvy intestines. A glimpse of the stomach. Were those the kidneys? And that, isn't that the rib cage?
What little that was left of the little boy inside Stein was ready to vomit and cry.
Then there was the scientist, the sadist, that was absolutely fascinated.
Young Stein began to giggle.
It was funny, wasn't it?
How many kids got to see their own guts?
Before the blackness overtook him Stein noticed that his father was laughing with him.
Marie had returned from the post office. Father's Day gifts. Again.
"What about your father, Stein? Did you have a father?" Stein froze. He had been hoping she wouldn't ask. The black coffee she had made him suddenly tasted even more bitter than usual. He choked on it.
After what seemed like an eternity of staring at his reflection in the coffee, he said, "I did."
"Well?"
"Well what?"
"Is he still... alive?"
Stein shrugged.
"You don't know? Don't you love each other at all?"
What a question.
"No, we didn't. But he did care about me." At Marie's quizzical look, Stein smiled, a dark upturning of the lips. "He taught me the fundemantal law of science - that real knowledge only comes from experience."
"And how did he do that?"
The smile turned into a wider grin. "He showed me my own insides." He strengthened me. He made me into a true scientist. He found me my passion. He gave me his smoking habit. All in one night.
Happy Father's Day, Dad.
- END -
I know it was a bit long. Heh, was I a little to hard on poor chibi-Stein? Hope not. I also hope you liked the story.