1.
She was there again, her smile a soft curve, just blurred enough not to come off as coy. When he turns to her, in her black dress and her plain bonnet, she only ducks her head down enough so that the wisp of gold that came free, whether accidentally or no, is hidden.
"Mary," he says, simply. He supposes it is a ritual, at this point. That he acknowledges her. The midwife.
She lifts her head at that, a good foot and a half shorter than the hunter.
"Forgive me: I have heard you are to be in the eastern edge of the forest for today's hunt." It isn't a question, but she is still asking him, large brown eyes blinking sweetly.
The corner of his lip tips up, just barely. "No, Mary. Western."
"My apologies," she tells him, but she makes no move to grasp up her skirts and swish off. He carefully wipes his palms on the coarse material of his pants. If Justin were to see them, if anyone were to see them, they'd be good as dead.
It was indecent.
Mary breaks into his thoughts, her gentle voice lulling him back to the present.
"But since you are to be in the western edge. . .there's aster. . .and sedge, if you could?"
That's a ritual, too. The asking. She knows he cannot say no to her.
Of course he agrees, especially knowing Albarn will be his partner again and that he doesn't mind if he goes picking weeds for the village midwife. Neither of them really understand why he does the favors for her, or why she asks him specifically. He doesn't know why she risks so much for those woman and their babies, or why she puts her life, her image, her purity in danger to talk to him, but she does it all the same. So he says yes.
"Yes, Mary."
It all ends as it must. It all ends because his hands are filthy and she is clean, but because he has touched her, poisoned her with his very existence, because she has reached out to touch him, she is ruined to them. To fate. To the God she prays to for safety.
Mary should have taken more precautions. She should have lied to those women, shouldn't have told them she made those concoctions, should simply have slipped it to them, knowing it would help. It would only take one failure, whether her own or natural, to make her come undone.
That woman, the one who lost her baby, the one who screamed and hollered and said it was Mary's fault, that she slipped her a potion (witch witch witch) and killed her baby, pointed her finger. And Mary knew her bones would burn.
They asked him to cut her hair. Down to the roots. Down with his bloodiest, dirtiest knife because who knew if she was a temptress on top of it all? They wanted to humiliate her. And of course they would choose him: he knew how to destroy, how to cull out an animal to the meat. How to ruin.
Justin was there, that crazed, devote priest. And he was watching him with eyes that were colder than the lakes in winter. And Mary, sweet Mary who asked him to pick those remedies, those natural ingredients that led to her death simply stayed still.
"It will be all right," he could almost hear her say.
But she didn't. She would hang. Tomorrow. Tonight, even. Justin cleared his throat so he brought down the knife, the sharp, clean edge of it glinting the reflection of the fire. She looked radiant in that room, even with her head bowed. He settled the blade close to her scalp and sliced her locks off. No bonnet, here. No saccharine smile, no long black skirts that she lifted just enough to give him an ample peek at her ankles.
But she was all warmth and life.
He shore her locks off until they collected on the floor, and he made sure he stood in a way so that they were not trampled. When Justin left, with his prisoner, with the woman they called witch, with Mary, he collected every strand off from the floor.
It still smelled of lavender days after.
They hung her at sunrise. When the sky burned like the fire of a hell he only heard of from Justin's lips: the liar's lips. Hell. He scoffed. What did he need Justin to tell him what hell was? He was living it regardless of what anyone thought.
She did not kick. She did not grasp the rope around her neck in her two slim, life-delivering hands. She did not scream or plead or sob. But Mary looked at him, her eyes calling to him, pulling everything inside of his body right to her.
He watched when they forced the stool from beneath her feet. He watched as she choked.
He turned away only when the sun was high, and the air was burning and wet. Her body was cold and he had no tears to give her.
He followed her. He had to. It was her eyes and the smell of her hair he had in his fists. She called to him more than any God ever could, more than Justin could instill within him or the town. Albarn was grim when he found his corpse, bloodied, the intestines looping out of his body. Albarn was the one who hid his knife, the knife that was so close to Mary's scalp that night, down into the compost. Albarn was who told the town that it looked as if a wolf finally got to him.
But when Justin went into his home, dug about for his silver, the bones and pelts of prior kills, he found the box. A simple thing, plain, with no inscription to speak of. It was so much like him to have something so undecorated, and right within hand's reach.
When Justin opened it, for it was meant to be opened, he found her hair collected like spun gold, no ribbon keeping them together.
And they knew there was no wolf.
2.
The good people of filthy London, 1732, told him he was crazy for hiring a disabled maid and he supposes they're right, but she fits better inside his home than anyone else ever could, so he'd take crazy over frustrated any day. Besides which, Marie is good at her job, even if she only has one good eye.
"Dr. Stein? Your patient has arrived," she announces, smoothing her fingers down the front of her apron, and Stein only stands up and cracks both of his wrists, nodding. He can tell that she has her gaze on the back of his head, he can feel it. She has an unearthly stare that jolts him down to the boots.
It's downright electric.
Regardless, she steps out, the sound of her heels clicking over his immaculate floors echoes before she corrals the man in, who is coughing up a storm. Marie takes out a piece of cloth from somewhere and gives it to him so that he may prevent infecting the healthier folks.
She leaves.
She's efficient. He knows she's probably off to go clean up one of his messes, whether clutter or blood, without question. In company, she is nothing if not professionalism, not a single hair out of place beneath her hat.
It is only when they leave that she sighs, able to loosen her corset and slouch across from him, hands on the table. In those moments, he can roll his eyes and tell her he never should have become a doctor. And she will laugh, as she always laughs, because she finds him amusing.
She brings color to the gray of his home, how bleak it was, before her.
The years pass by with her. Too many of them gone too quickly. She grows clumsier and unsteady on her feet. Her skin goes pallid and she slims until she is a skeleton in the closet of his house. Patients do not want to see her. They request someone else to lead them to him, to answer the door, and Stein grows annoyed at them, but the maid wobbles when she sets one foot in front of the other.
And then her good eye goes just as her other did.
It's slow, gradual. But it goes bad, all the same and she is left sightless.
He knows he works himself sick trying to get her to see again, going through book after book. And no one knows why. He remembers a smile, a sunset, or a sunrise, perhaps, but it's nonsense. Stupidity. He's going mad. He turns away people at his door, as he has to answer it himself once her sight goes, and she cannot see him become a ruin, a graveyard. He thinks that much, at least, is for the best.
When the cough gets him, or the cold, or the ache or the insomnia, she is there but she is also not there. She gropes for his hand in the room and he cannot call out to her so she can find him by hearing, and touch only goes so far. She gropes out but he has stopped breathing already, and she is still feeling for solidity.
When she finally finds his hand, the pulse has left. When she grabs him, he is no longer there.
3.
"Stupid Spirit!" Marie calls out, sniffling again, her hands wringing while she runs. The wind whips her high collar so it tickles against her jaw, set tight and grinding her teeth to dust.
There are no tears. Not yet.
Instead, there is just Marie running, running and angry, running and sad, running from her friends. She is so sick of being unable to fight the villains. She supposes, were the moon to fall from the sky, or the sun, they could utilize her powers to illuminate their way.
Hah. The day will never come. Useless, she thinks. A flashlight with a band-aid, nothing more.
She is furious that she has started to cry, her emotions balling up and flailing around her. She is angry that she has become a flash-bang with no control, simply lighting up with her feelings. It would be better if they just consumed her, really.
How can she possibly compare to a boy who manipulates metal? Stupid Spirit. Or Kami, who can fly, or Mira whose punch has broken whole brick walls to rubble? Marie is just the girl with the healer hands. But what good is that? She'd rather be out there with her friends, fighting, winning, making it so that no one she loves needs to be healed.
The tears that drip down her face are bitter and she simply gives in to them, collapsing down as if she were a matchstick house in the rain, wilting to the dirt. The air feels damp, but there is a spark, somewhere. A storm might be coming.
How fitting.
She thinks back to Spirit's idiotic comment, about how they just needed one more person out there and Kami wouldn't even be hurt. That it was stupid of his wife to go out there in the first place to fight Medusa when the pig-tailed woman was pregnant. And how could Marie ever let her go? Out of her sight?
Her lip wobbles and then she is sobbing, the blame settling heavy. The air crackles with what must be an incoming thunderstorm, her entire form glowing as she wraps her arms around herself. She's crying so hard she's choking. She's moaning low in her throat. She's coughing. She's muttering under her breath in an incredibly deep, husky voice. She's. . .a man?
Her eyes snap open, one golden as her flesh and the other dark brown, and she whips her head to the side, hearing the low, muffled cursing again.
Quickly, she scrambles to her feet. She may be a healer, she may not have the powers her friends do, but Marie is no damsel. Her face sets, the puff of her cheeks and eyes likely making her look far less intimidating, but she's been told she has a hell of a swing.
And she sure knows when she has to use it.
But the low curses quickly turn to groaning, and a gray-haired head slowly peaks up from behind a bush. Marie has to gasp because the man looks like a downright corpse with his pale flesh and multitude of scars, and he turns that head in her general direction, his eyes cracking open and squinting.
His gaze locks with her own, and his lips break open, parched and cracked, and he mutters out "Alive?" to which she can only blink.
"What?" she asks, her brows meeting close to the middle. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
But he only looks at her, mouthing something, and she feels sparks again. It takes him a few seconds to say "Light-ning," and when she looks at her skin, she realizes it is coming from her. She doesn't know how he finds the strength to stand up, but when he does, unsteady, she has the urge to come and prop him up. He looks like something come from the dead, especially going by the massive fresh scarring across his bare chest.
Her mind slows to a shuddering stop when she notes that the wound has the residue of her healing powers, golden powder sprinkled all over his torso.
Suddenly, the thought of him looking like a corpse makes sense. He seems like some Frankenstein-ian monster, what with his large, hulking form, in a tradition tall-man's stoop.
But then she feels the electricity running through and out of her palms, and she is rendered even further speechless as she stares at her hands, which give off small flashes of highly concentrated light. It isn't the controlled, gentle gold of her healing, but the voltage of something far more volatile.
And he watches her, trying to piece together how, one moment, he was sliced straight across the chest by his ex-girlfriend's (definitely ex, the murdering sort of made that one clear) pink-haired child, the next, he was sitting in a shrub, covered in something that looked like fairy dust, suddenly able to breathe again.
The girl was downright flashing, her eyes bright and shining.
And he had to wonder why she looked so achingly familiar.
4.
He can't feel his legs. From his spot on the cot, he can barely even turn his head and the entire left side of his face is numb, likely just visceral and grit. The impromptu medical room is full of toy-soldier boys who ended up broken and wind-up dolls of women, hordes of them, to try to heal them.
They love them when they're heroes, but Stein knows he is nothing, now. Just a boy with half a face who will come home in a box.
The nurse that tends to him, that bandages what needs to be bandaged, is so tender and sweet. Her fingers go through the short, white-blonde hair he has on his scalp, as though checking for injury though he's been in that burning medical tent for ages, waiting to rot.
She is kind, but he can't feel his legs, and everything in him feels like mince-meat and he doesn't have the strength to open the eye on his better side.
But she remains by him, her fingertips stroking what of his skin wasn't churned and spat out, her lips ghosting over the stubble of his cheek. He doesn't know her, he usually hates being touched, but he wants to thank her all the same.
When he dies, she is holding his hand so tightly, he can feel both of her palms try to warm him though he is going cold.
He dies and she says "Stein," watery, as though a siren's call, and he knows he's never told her his name because his throat was just so sore, but she must have read his tags.
Yet, when his ruined lips open, a final, weeping breathe sighing out of him, he hears "Marie," in his own voice, even if she's never told him.
And he likes to think she mourns until the next time.
5.
He is disappointed in the concept of "soul-mates" when he turns thirteen and he still doesn't have a name marked on him. It was easier to believe that it was all bullshit, really. Spirit got his when he was still in diapers, everyone already had one, and then there Stein was, stuck without a single patch of ink on his skin.
No one teased him about it because no one knew. No one at school cared enough about him to even talk to him, so they didn't matter. His mother was concerned, but she knew it was sore for him.
So he threw himself into studying. He went headfirst into homework and research while Spirit went on multiple dates, despite the fact that he had "Kami Tanaka" tattooed, on his upper arm. The redhead wasn't concerned with the soul-mate stuff, either. He just wanted to live without being tied down to the looming, capital letters of THE ONE. Spirit found it all stupid.
Of all the things he and Spirit talked about, that was where they agreed.
When he gets his tattoo, he has graduating with his bachelor's degree and has already applied and been accepted for a graduate program. There is nothing climactic about it. He just wakes up the next day, checks his mail to see if his diploma came in, which it didn't, and makes coffee. He scratches at his chest, which is feeling tingly and sore, and decides on a shower.
It is his reflection in the mirror that stops him, the instant he takes his shirt off. There, down the skin of his ribs, it's written. Looping and cursive and delicate: Maaria Andersson.
Stein wants to vomit. He swallows the bile down, the sick disgust churning deep in his stomach.
She was just born and he's twenty-fucking-one years old.
Stein decides he wants nothing to do with soul-mate bullshit, officially, after that. He didn't have any real medical classes yet, but he knows how to get scalpels and he looks up how to remove skin and then ends up just tossing everything to the wayside because he is just so furious whenever he sees those curving letters. He's enrolled, he'll have to do it by ear: because what good is a doctor who isn't willing to experiment, anyway?
The glide of the blade hurts and he wants it to hurt because he wants to remember how it feels without anesthetic. He bites pieces of his inner-cheek off in his molars and winces, but keeps his hands as steady as he can. When he's done, he's left holding the bleeding hunk of himself in his hand and he thinks he wants to burn it.
The stitches pull at his skin, sloppy, poorly done sutures that keep his flesh together though it is stretched farther than it should reach.
He should have known better than to assume that she would leave so easily. If it was so simple to remove a link like that, people would have done it before.
Instead, it shows up on his other side, the same location, just flipped.
He removes that one, too.
And soon, he is a quilt of pink skin and shiny scars that don't heal correctly. When her name appears, as small as anything, like a dusting of freckles curving an inch under his eye, he culls that, too.
Everyone is concerned when he shows up with the gauze, but he only glares at them and continues on with his work. The years pass, he goes through too many scalpels with his self-butchering, and he gets his masters and his doctorate and they nickname him Frankenstein because they find it fitting, but no one knows why he looks the way he does.
She never shows up on his arms or legs, his neck. The one time across his face was punishment, he's sure of it. But other than that, she remains secret.
When most of his torso is a map of scarring, when he has no more flesh to give her, that name shows up curved right where it first was, over the shiny scarred patch on his ribcage.
He is 32 and he is so sickened because, good god, she'd be celebrating her 11th birthday and that's wrongwrongwrong but he knows he has lost.
He keeps it, but he covers up all his mirrors.
He learns to live with it in the way that anyone can live with anything. Through time. Through ignoring it. THE ONE doesn't show up in his life and he's thankful of that. Teaching those college classes keeps him entirely engrossed, and he's approaching his mid 40s, thankful he's been spared seeing her, knowing her.
He's had his scares, though. Maria Anderson is a common name, it lacks the extra letters, but he knows that sometimes, the people who make those damn lists drink one too many glasses of wine and start adding in and removing random extra letters and numbers and goodness knows what else. It's a common enough name and he's seen it on his roster before, terrified when he looks up before he pinpoints the blot of ink on the girl's skin that doesn't have his name and he is so relieved.
It isn't strange that he has a Maaria Andersson on his roster, again. He's past the scares. He believes it's another false alarm like all the ones before it.
When he calls it, his voice easing over the vowels and taking on the slightest Scandinavian edge because he's said her name more times than he can count, hating it, wishing it were removed from him, he looks up and finds a small, blonde girl with her hand raised.
Right over her wrist, plain as day, clear and defiant, is his name: Frank Stein. When he stares at her face, her eyes, golden as honey, take on a knowing glint.
She is 22 and she's been waiting all her life for him. He doesn't know how to breathe or how to think or why he has such sudden cardiac arrhythmia. Her eyes are bright and happy and relieved, glowing. For the barest of moments, she looks ethereal, radiant.
And he can smell lavender.
6.
"Well, class. You know the rules! No weapons to the face, no pudding cups used as impromptu instruments of destruction, melee is allowed, as per usual." There was a small pause before Ms. Satine Morningstar continued on with her usual speech, the dialogue unchanging. "Sparring partners have not changed since last assignment."
From her spot in the class, Marie's eyes widened. The atmosphere was strained, to put it lightly. Yet Ms. Morningstar continued on, as though she didn't feel the still constant blood-lust bouncing from Kami and the fear from Spirit. And it was all because of that one pale kid no one ever talked to. Everyone assumed he would sit out on the sparring matches, after Spirit left their partnership, he didn't have anyone else. And Marie, who Kami left for Spirit, was impossible to wield anyway, so she thought she'd definitely be on the bench.
"We've all heard about the recent switch-a-roo that happened. Assigned opponents are by Meister, so Spirit, Marie, just follow your partner's lead," the teacher said.
Marie's eyebrows furrowed. She blinked at her professor, stepping forward. "Ms. Morningstar-"
"It's okay, Marie. For today, you can be paired with Stein. He's in need of a partner, as well." Her tone was gentle, though not without the obvious sternness of a woman who expected orders to be followed through. The boy, Stein, she supposed, sensed this and looked at Marie intently, his eyes focusing on her throat.
Did he want to slit it? Marie shuddered. She wouldn't put it past the kid. He was a weird one, never talking, never interacting with anyone. Marie hesitated before she nodded, stepping forward and away from the group that quickly scrambled to pair up in their respective areas, though they were clearly looking at her. Kami stared at her friend before she held her hand out and caught Spirit as he transformed, the red-head looking grim before he became a scythe.
Marie looked down. Everyone knew she was one of the hardest weapons to wield. She'd soul rejected many a Meister in her day. She didn't understand why she was so incompatible with everyone. Kami had been a lucky find, worthy, as her mother would say, but now that she was without a permanent partner, the thought of yet another soul rejection was weighing heavily on her tiny shoulders. Regardless, when she took a deep breath and glanced up again, Stein was directly in front of her, jolting her straight to her Mary Janes. Everyone was looking, some in amusement, others, pity. Kami was out of her sight, so Marie couldn't even look to her friend for comfort when she gave off an undignified squeak.
Stein paid her reaction no mind. His voice was flat when he spoke, and low, so no one could hear them. He knew all about her problems with partners in the past.
"Transform," he told her, and she winced.
He treated her like she was already a weapon, like she was inanimate, or something. Certainly not the best way to start off their temporary partnership. She squished her mouth over to the side, resisting the urge to glower.
She kind of hoped she shocked the hell out of him when he tried to pick her up and failed. And she did believe he would fail. High test scores, powerful, or no.
"I'd like to know who we're fighting, first, if that's alright with you," she responded, her high voice coming out snarky. Still, no reaction from Mr. Monotone.
"Kami," he said, flatly. Then, his eyes shifted down from her face. Marie flinched at the fact that she had to fight with her friend, but grew aghast at where Stein's look settled. He was staring her chest with mass levels of concentration and Marie's blood boiled. In the future, she'd understand that he was analyzing her soul, but at the moment, she was furious.
The pervert! And so blatantly, in front of everyone!
Marie snarled, furiously swinging a punch at his face.
When his hand grabbed her wrist, she didn't expect the sharp current that ran through her entire body, her soul being poked and prodded until she transformed, her handle settling, neatly, right in his palm. Stein was smirking, smug.
Had he. . .done that?
And he was actually holding her. As if she weighed nothing at all. Her surprise outweighed every other feeling.
She was in Stein's hands and she felt like she belonged there.
Stein turned to look at where their delighted teacher was, who directed them to stand in their assigned area, facing Kami who looked as though she were about to beat-down a Kishin egg. But Stein was staring Kami down, too, his glasses glinting. Glares weren't supposed to be so intimidating, not when you had to look up to deliver them, since Stein was so short. Kami's face was dark, her lower lip caught in her teeth while she brought Spirit to a defensive stance in front of her.
"Stein," Kami hissed out, but the boy merely grinned, his face stretched strangely.
Kami had an even shorter temper than Marie did, and that was saying something. Just Stein's expression was enough to provoke her, and the pig-tailed girl rushed forward, swinging Spirit in a smooth arch toward Stein. His grin deepened, and he brought Marie up to deflect Spirit's blade, quickly jumping back as soon as the scrape was heard.
Her friend hesitated, her face conflicted when she saw that she just hit Marie.
'Soul Resonance,' Stein told her, and she felt it throughout her entire being all at once. It was a command, not a request, but when she felt his soul touch against her own, she gasped, bending to it.
Her. Marie Mjolnir, the most incompatible soul the DWMA had seen in years, embraced Stein's soul with an ease that brought tears to her eyes. Even Kami struggled with resonating with her, yet here was this arrogant, terrifying pipsqueak, making Marie crackle with electricity.
There was a warmth to it, and their resonance brought sparks to the air itself. From her weapon form, Marie was breathless, her lightning sparking through her and through Stein.
And he looked. . .at peace. The creepy grin on his face diminished, and his eyes were softer, less jagged looking. Kami snarled, the static in the air frizzing up her hair before she charged forward once more, fury in every muscle directed to the boy who cut up her boyfriend and currently had her best friend in his hand.
Stein was brought back to the spar immediately but he didn't swing at Kami. He didn't swing at Spirit either, and his palms had a charge to them. All of his electricity shifted and flowed into Marie, and she amplified and filtered it as pure force and energy, naturally.
He adjusted his hold on her, utilizing his small stature to duck under Spirit's sharp blade, which skimmed a few strands of his hair and he slammed Marie right to the floor beneath Kami's feet.
The resounding noise splintered through everything, forcing half the students to stop when they felt the quake. Kami lost her balance immediately, stumbling backward before she tripped, landing on her side. Where she once stood was obliterated, the ground crumbles and dust.
Marie was ringing in her weapon form, thrumming, and when he smiled at her, creepy though it was, she lit up from within.
7.
His eyes widen immediately when he sees her on his roof, feet bare, her gogo-boot landing right in front of him.
He knows it's a punishment, what he deserves.
But he races to her, anyway. She stands on the edge, and he pleads with her, he asks her what she is doing, why she is doing it, anything to stall. When she faces him, her long black skirt billows and her hair blows free; he can almost see the noose.
She falls backward. He cannot catch her.
And he still has no tears to give.
When he first hears her voice, his back to her, for a moment he thinks it's another life. He wonders what she is this time; what he is. But no, no. It isn't. He is curled in on himself, his ears ringing and pulsing with the sick static but she is there and when she speaks it stops faster than it could have ever started.
Marie.
He turns, turns in a million different lives to her, in a million different hallways, she is standing in front of him, bare. Her hand is extended toward him, smile just blurred enough at the edges not to be coy.
"Try very hard to picture it: the place that you're supposed to be"
She is all light, an electric woman illuminating every dark patch. So he grasps her hand and he says her name and when he falls forward her arms are around him, there to catch him, and his chin is hooks over her shoulder. Her hair tickles his neck and he breathes in.
He's there.
The obligatory reincarnation AU. How could I ever resist?