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"For the hand that rocks the cradle, is the hand that rules the world."

- William Rose Wallace

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It was, of course, something she had fully anticipated. The baby's crying was perfectly normal (she'd be more concerned if he was silent) and the first night with her child home was going to be one of the more difficult ones. Still, it wasn't as if she didn't know what she was supposed to do. She would deal with it as best she could. The golden-eyed woman opened the door of the nursery as quietly as possible, so as not to startle her child and make things worse, and padded silently over to the dark wood crib on the opposite side of the room.

"Alaric," she whispered, looking down at the tiny boy moving in his blue fleece blanket. The name still felt strange on her tongue. Not that she disliked it, but it hadn't been her choice at all. "Shh, darling. It's okay."

Far from being comforted, Alaric only screwed up his face and wailed louder, and she sighed deeply. Was he really so upset at the mere sight of her? Never mind it, she knew how to quiet him. Carefully, she reached down and lifted both baby and blanket into her arms, rocking him slowly and gently, the way she remembered her own mother had done. "You're all right, little one," she cooed in what she hoped was a soothing enough tone. "Mama's here now. Shhh..."

Alaric squirmed frantically in her arms, his wide gold eyes bright with tears. Clearly, he was unmoved by sweet words. "Come on now, what is it you need?" she said, keeping her voice light. Another memory of her mother gave her an idea. It wasn't something she had much experience with, but it was worth a try. "Do you want Mama to sing you a lullaby, how does that sound?" Not waiting to see if he responded, she started right in, steady and soft:

"Hush, little baby, quiet now, Mama's going to hold you safe and sound.

Hush, little baby, don't make a move, your Mama'd move heaven and earth for you."

All right, maybe it wasn't the best of lullabies, and maybe Mother had done it better. But to be perfectly fair to herself, Mother hadn't been making it up as she went. And it wasn't as if Alaric cared about the lyrics, only the tone. He didn't understand a word she was saying. But regardless of that, was it her imagination, or were his movements slightly slower, his cries just a little quieter? Was he listening to her? She smiled. This was working, she just had to keep it going.

"Hush, little baby, don't you cry, you're the most precious thing in Daddy's life."

She'd seen the way Stein behaved around his new son. He was quiet on the subject (not that he'd ever been one to speak freely about his emotions), but it was obvious that he, of all people, had developed a soft spot for little Alaric. Around his child, his madness was as neutralized as she had ever felt it, and there was a warmth in his eyes, a gentleness to his touch, and a sense of contentment that she had never known him to have before, not even around her. She had to admit, it made her a little bit jealous. But not much, not much at all. Alaric was hers too, after all, and that was more than enough.

"Hush, little baby, you'll never know, how Daddy loves you with all his soul."

According to Stein, Alaric's soul, though still very new, was going to be powerful when he was older, like a tiny spark that would one day grow into an inferno. He had also said that, if he wasn't mistaken, he had inherited his mother's Healing Wavelength, though it was too early to tell whether he would become a weapon like her or become a meister like his father. Either would be perfectly fine with her. She did not doubt Stein in the slightest; she trusted his Soul Perception, and wondered briefly if that would show up in Alaric as well. What he'd read from their son's soul, for the most part, delighted her. It meant that he was healthy and strong in both body and soul, and she had nothing to worry about there.

She became aware of a sudden quiet in the room. Alaric's cries had softened into whines, and he lay almost completely still in her arms. "Oh, you like me talking about your daddy?" she crooned. "Well, that makes two of us, doesn't it?" From what she'd seen, Stein's familial affection was far from unrequited: his son was shaping up to be quite the daddy's boy. If he were here, Alaric would have been calm as ever in just a moment with his father. For her, maybe it would only take a few more lines to settle him completely.

"Hush, little baby, don't you fear, Mama's always going to be right here.

Hush, little baby, my precious one, I know you'll be your father's son."

~0~

After five months of being woken up at all hours of the night, every night, by her son's crying, it was the wholly abnormal silence that pulled Marie from sleep tonight. Blinking, she sat up in bed, wondering drowsily why Alaric was so quiet. Maybe Stein, awake to begin with as usual, had gone in to tend to him and she'd simply slept through it? No; that thought went out the window when her hand brushed against another, and she turned to see her meister under the covers next to her, dead to the world and snoring softly. Which didn't necessarily mean he hadn't already been up with Alaric, but still, something like fear made Marie's stomach twist, and she got the sickening sense that something was not right. Maternal instinct screamed at her, Go get your child!

Not bothering to throw a robe on over her pajamas, she jumped out of bed and hurried down the hall to Alaric's room, her heart thumping hard and fast. She opened the door and found little relief in the fact that it appeared undisturbed. She trusted her gut feeling (which was very rarely wrong) more, and appearances could not always be trusted anyway. The window was still shut against the chill of the winter night, and the light pastel-colored furniture - Marie had made sure months before Alaric was born that the baby's room would be especially bright in the general grayness of Patchwork Labs - remained intact and in place, but there was still that distinct feeling of wrong that would not leave her. She approached the small white crib in the center of the room, praying to any deity that would hear her that she would look in and see her precious son lying there, safe and unhurt and peacefully sleeping.

When instead she found the crib empty, with no sign at all of Alaric, everything inside her - her heart, her breathing, her thoughts - stopped.

Marie was frozen with horror for only a moment. Almost immediately, she whipped around and bolted back down the hall. Her mind raced: My son is gone who could have taken him why would they take him it can't have been long I can still find him we have to find him I'll kill whoever took him from me my baby is gone! She threw open the bedroom door, ran in and grabbed her meister by the shoulders, shaking him as hard as she could. "Franken! Franken, wake up!" More often than not, Stein would be pulling all-nighters in his lab, claiming that he was used to running on a small amount of sleep. This meant that when he did come to bed for the night, he slept so deeply that an earthquake wouldn't wake him, but he was going to get up now, damn it! "Wake up!"

He didn't even stir at being jostled so roughly. On a desperate impulse, she let go of his shoulders and slammed her palm into his bare chest, sending a current through his body. Instantly shocked awake, Stein let out a pained yell and reflexively shoved her away from him. "Marie! What the hell are you - ?!"

"Alaric!" she shouted back, voice breaking on her child's name. "Alaric's gone!"

"Wh...What?" He sounded breathless, as though the words had knocked the wind out of him. "What do you mean, he's gone?!"

"He hasn't made a sound all night, I went in to check on him, and he wasn't there, we have to - !"

"Wait - his soul, maybe I can..." Trying to fight down the surge of panic rising in him (emotions had to be controlled, his madness would happily feed off his fear and desperation), Stein closed his eyes and reached out with his Soul Perception. At this point, Alaric's wavelength was as familiar to him as his own; he could pick his son out of a crowd if he had to. He felt Marie's soul right beside him, its warmth faded under sharp agitation...and no one else's anywhere in the lab. He pushed out further, into the surrounding area, and felt not one familiar soul. His eyes snapped open. "I can't sense him. I can't sense his soul!"

He leaped out of bed and ran for the door. "Call Shinigami-sama!" he yelled over his shoulder. "I'm going to see if I can - " Could what? He wasn't sure exactly what he was going to do outside the lab, but he knew he couldn't just stand there idly while his infant son was somewhere far out of his protection. It had been nine at night when he'd checked on Alaric and gone to sleep, he remembered, and a glance at the wall clock in the living room told him that it was now one-thirty in the morning. Whoever had Alaric had had, at most, four and a half hours to get him away from Death City. Truthfully, that wasn't the only possibility - they might have done it sooner before Marie woke up, or they could be stationary and closer to the city - but it was the smartest one on the part of the captor. The further they were from this place, the further they were from him, his weapon, and the vengeance they would deliver on the person who'd dared to steal their child from them. His hands itched with the all-too-familiar urge to rend, to tear, to destroy, and he would tear as many people to shreds as he had to, to get his son back in one piece -

No. Focus. Find him first.

Stein burst out the front door into the empty night, and the icy air hit his bare skin harshly. Even knowing that it was illogical (Soul Perception saw through everything short of Soul Protect and it would never lie), maybe he could get a clearer view from outside? He might have missed something before, Alaric might still be within his reach. There had to be at least a trace of his son left somewhere around here, there had to be. Pushing out with his soul as far as he could, it felt the same as the first try, but he did not pause. Failing to find his son was in no way a viable option. He strained for the faintest sign of it: Alaric's small, sweet soul. The feeling of that soul was not something Stein would forget in a hurry, nor was it something he had any intention of giving up. Of course, he'd known beforehand of the natural bond between a parent and their infant child (several of his biology textbooks had detailed the chemical activity in both that ensured it), but never experienced it firsthand until Alaric's birth. Holding the child in his arms, he could feel the unfettered trust and love Alaric had for his father pulsing in his wavelength, more than he had felt in even Marie, perhaps misplaced but still genuine. He felt the absolute purity of his son's soul, the solid proof that in his life full of destruction there was still something good, something perfect, that he could create.

That was not something he was willing to lose...And yet he had lost it. Now he had to face cold, stark reality: Alaric had disappeared, and he had no idea how to find him again. The thought was like a solid punch to the chest, and his blood pounded in his ears while he struggled to remember how to breathe. The rational part of his mind warned him that letting his fear run unchecked like this only invited his madness to take free rein over him, but it went unheard over the steadily rising buzz of static in his head. He could feel it clawing at the inside of his skull, greedy and disorienting, and he knew he had to fight it back again but it was quickly becoming harder to remember why he had to -

A sudden sound, a shout of his name, from behind him threw things abruptly back into sharp relief. Marie. Marie's voice. Stein could still feel her soul, warm and golden, and that was just enough to remind him why he had to pull back from this and get back in control of himself. He dug his nails into his thigh, the five simultaneous stings of pain bringing him back to his senses as he willed the wave of madness back. He didn't know exactly how long it took until it was, for the moment, at bay, but when it was Marie was still calling for him. His voice couldn't quite work enough to answer yet, but he turned and ran back into the house, to his son's empty room.

~0~

Thankfully, Shinigami-sama had answered almost as soon as she'd called, and on being informed of the situation, promised to send people over as quickly as possible. With that taken care of, Marie was not content to wait around doing nothing, and she returned to Alaric's room. She hadn't paid enough attention before, and maybe there was some important clue that she had missed. The room looked much the same as when she'd put the baby to bed earlier that night, as if Alaric had just vanished. But there had to be something different. As she looked around, her mind, still stuck in overdrive, kept wandering.

Who would kidnap Alaric? And just as importantly, why? What did they want with her son? One possibility was that they were holding him for ransom (the combined salaries of a Death Scythe and her three-star meister were considerable), but that was ruled out by the absence of any note. And she was remembering the whispers that had gone around Death City after they'd announced her pregnancy: that they shouldn't be having a child, it would turn out as twisted as its father, Stein would neglect it, abuse it, treat it as a lab rat. Marie grimaced at the memories. Despite his unparalleled talent as a meister, her partner had never had the greatest reputation in this city. But while their friends and students had had their concerns, they had all given them their full support. Even Kami, who detested Stein, had congratulated them (however grudgingly to Stein) and wished them good luck when Spirit had been able to give her the news. None of those other people actually knew them, so what right did they have to judge?! Then again, it made a sickening sort of sense, that they wouldn't trust in their ability to raise and care for their child well. She had to wonder just how serious they could be about it. Would someone have taken Alaric from them out of misguided good intentions? She gave a frustrated huff. It was no likelier than any of her other theories. They needed more information.

Just then, something caught her eye as she passed the window. When she'd first seen it closed, she'd assumed that meant it hadn't been touched. But taking a closer look at it now, she could see that one outside corner had been cracked and splintered slightly, as if hit by something. And was it her imagination, or could she see something stuck in a crack, standing out dark against the white painted wood? This could be nothing, or it could be important, but either way she should get Stein back in here to help her out.

He responded quickly to the calls of his name, and to her relief he appeared to be more or less in control of himself, if understandably agitated. The vacant look in his eyes soon sharpened into clarity when she told him that there was a chance they might have a lead. Slowly, he pushed open the window to take a closer look. "It doesn't look like any part of the wall was touched," he muttered, half to himself. "They don't seem to have climbed." He pulled out a pair of tweezers from his pants pocket (left in from his last experiment of the night), leaned out the window, and carefully removed the small object from the crack, holding it in front of his face, to examine it. It was a small piece of material reminiscent of skin, rough-textured but delicate and so thin it was translucent.

"It looks like a scale," he mused, wondering why it seemed so familiar to him. "Like some kind of reptile's..." He froze at that thought, horror striking him again as the memories of years ago rushed into his mind.

The huge brown snake hovering in the sky above the church, coiled around its mistress. Sharp gold eyes that stared right through him, to see the deepest desires of his heart. A smug, knowing smirk, a mocking laugh.

"Oh, no..."

Marie's confusion lasted only a moment. She could put the pieces together as well, and she recognized that fear in her meister's widened eyes. Her stomach dropped and her body went cold, as all at once, she knew who had her baby.

~0~

The child was quiet now, save for some nervous whimpering, but he was in no way comforted. Even though she'd been nothing but sweet and gentle to him thus far, he looked up at her with fear in his eyes (the exact warm, honey-gold color as his mother's, that it so irked her to see) and refused to relax. He had to know that she wasn't his mother. She wouldn't be surprised if he somehow knew that he was, all of a sudden, in a dangerous place that he was not supposed to be. Really, it was amazing that she'd gotten him to stop crying at all.

It didn't bother her, though, that Alaric hadn't taken well to her. An infant's memory didn't last all that long, not without constant reminders, and after a couple months here with only her to interact with, he would forget all about where he came from and she would be the only parent he knew. Then her latest experiment could truly begin. Crona had been a disappointment and a failure, but she always learned from her failures. Years spent in hiding, laying low away from Shibusen (true, they believed her dead, but better safe than sorry), had given her plenty of time to go over the errors she'd made in training them and form plans to correct these for her next attempt at raising a warrior, and later a Kishin, that would bend to her will. And when she'd discovered that Stein, of all people, had sired a child in her absence, she knew that she had found the perfect subject.

She gave Alaric's downy, pale silver hair a light and affectionate stroke. She already knew his soul would be strong, from what she'd overheard from the snakes she'd placed around the lab, and she liked to think that she could see other traits of her former lover in him already. Those traits of his other parent were a different story entirely. Measures would certainly have to be taken to eliminate them, the earlier on, the better. Nothing could really be done about the eyes (at least, not yet), but that useless wavelength, the name she had given him, any problematic aspects of the personality...Everything of her had to be burned away. The best case scenario, the one she would reach no matter what she had to do, was that Alaric would end up with only what he'd inherited from Stein and what she had forced into him over the years of training and conditioning that were to come. It would be as if he were their own son.

The thought made her smile. Alaric was hers now. One of the most vital parts of Stein's life (and the life of his precious Death Scythe) belonged entirely to her now, and would until the end of the boy's life if she had her way. The satisfaction that washed over her every time she remembered that was wonderful. She would raise him to be powerful, intelligent, and utterly devoted to her. He would be everything that his father had not been. This one would not disappoint her as his father had. She gave a soft laugh, caressing Alaric's face once more.

"Hush, little baby, soon you'll know, Mama's never going to let you go.

Hush, little baby, here you'll stay, because Daddy couldn't keep his demon away."

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A/N - My first attempt at a Halloween fic! Eh, not my favorite thing I've ever written, but I think it turned out pretty good. I wanted to try writing something where after the plot twist, you read it over again and see some things in a different light. Also, I like the 'demented lullaby' trope more than I should. Reviews?

Happy Halloween, everyone!

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