Medusa did worse than make Marie's skin crawl. The usually gentle hammer wanted to flay the damn witch alive. But Stein got to it first.
Got to her first.
Marie wasn't an idiot. She knew what had gone on between Medusa and Stein wasn't just hatred. Marie knew how to conduct electricity: she knew when she felt it. And it was thick with them. Around them. When Medusa teased her, in that tomb of pillars where Stein soul-menaced Marie three feet into rock, when Medusa said Stein was crazy about her, Marie knew it was true.
It was illogical, what she was feeling. How. The way her arms felt as though they were heavy, her eye a marble. Stein didn't look at her or notice. She wasn't surprised. With the slightest bitterness, she believed he never really did. Marie was a ghost from his past, spoon-feeding him stability. It made sense that he would ignore her.
It didn't matter how often she held him, or pushed his hair out of his face when he slept. It was no matter that when they resonated, she felt everything inside of her snap together as opposed to apart.
She wished that the damn witch hadn't torn them asunder. She wishes she didn't have to backtrack.
The idea of the snake woman having been inside of her home slaughtered her. Her home. This place Stein cobbled together that she lived in, tried in, fixed in, ached in, was sacred to her. The conversations were things of sanctity, of secret. She had comforted Crona here, had eaten dinner with Stein here, had soothed his nightmares.
She felt invaded. She was invaded. Furious, Marie wanted to throw something, or punch something. Hell, just a dish would do. But she didn't, and instead, she ducked her head into Stein's lab, where he was smoking, his eyes unfocused, hair greasy, and clothes weeks old. Worse than before.
"I'm going for a walk, Franken."
And he said nothing nothing nothing.
Marie didn't want to go to Spirit. She didn't want to go to Azusa, or Death. She didn't want to dump all her emotions on someone else, especially when they had their own worries. Mira had never been the same since Sid came back from the dead. Sid, understandably, wasn't all there either.
So she slumped against a bench, somewhere, lost as per usual. She didn't want to cry, anymore. If she did, it meant that Medusa won.
That she was still winning. When had that witch lost to her? She couldn't hit her, even giving all she had. She didn't hurt her, verbally or otherwise. Medusa had taken all the playing chips and left none for Marie.
She didn't want to think about him in that way.
Sometimes, it was better not to think about him in any way.
(Not at night, when she's breathing soft as she can, hands moving and gliding and not his.)
Everything good dies hard. It is the ugly things that can be ignored, for a time. Marie can look past the madness, the cuts, how unstable Stein is. Her affection for him, though. That morphs and warps until it feels foreign and new, again. She remembers dragging the couch in to his living room (his first, no matter how long she's been there) and how he looked almost aghast at her defilement of his living space.
But he allowed it. He'd comforted her when she cried. He eclipsed her when she was going to be hurt.
In battle she trusted him.
In life, she had too many worries.
When she came back from her walk, a good six hours since she left because no one would give her directions because everyone was asleep and if they gave her directions, she couldn't follow them, anyway, he was still where she left him. Stein hadn't come for her and that was fine. She wasn't a damsel.
He was still smoking, too, ash on his lab coat.
"I'm back, Franken."
When he didn't look, she walked out again, to the room she was staying in. She felt their grip slipping. He at least acknowledged her, before. Cared, perhaps. But looked at least.
Marie woke him up in the morning despite it all. She handed him clean laundry, told him breakfast was ready, gave him a cup of coffee, lay a hand on his shoulder.
This was not the place where breakthroughs happened.
Everyone around her was fighting for their damn lives and here she was, playing babysitter to her first crush. She wanted to raise hell. She wanted him to listen. She was tired of small steps.
Marie thought in macro movement because she was wired that way. She didn't do well with details. And everybody thought she was there to fix him but he wasn't broken before. He was fine. But he was succumbing and she was bitter because she was a pulverizer: she knew how to crush things to dust and particles. It was keeping things intact that she often needed to work on.
She didn't even know how to sew. Putting things together wasn't her forte. And she had obviously failed at keeping them together in the first place.
So it was fitting that it was up to him to follow the breadcrumbs she left. She could lead him to the river but it was up to him to drink from it. She could give all she wanted but if he didn't take they were left stagnant and stilted.
But he went downstairs. He ate her food mechanically. She had already swallowed down her own meal and she knew his was cold because her own was cold and she had waited for him for over half an hour. But he ate it anyway.
They left for work together.
She knows that it is progress.
She kisses him first. She has to be first because this is Stein and he would never do it of his own volition. Because she was paranoid that he would look at her gold eye and blonde hair and fair skin and be brought back to Medusa and she doesn't want that swimming in her head.
She kisses him first and he says 'Marie' and stoops down to her height level. She hops up, ready to wrap her legs around his waist because she doesn't want him to be uncomfortable and she hopes against hope that he would catch her.
And he does.
Not much changes after that. Not that she expects it to: she knows they aren't some romance movie where her love for him could make him whole. He already was whole the second he accepted all of himself. He didn't need her to start coming back together again.
Marie knew how to break but Stein knew how to stitch. Marie had spent a lot of time on her trek to find him with Crona bitterly thinking of the things she would give to have him back. It only took her all and a lucky shot and a lot of willpower on Stein's part.
So she tries to bring ease. Marie cooks. She keeps him safe. She pulls him to her bed at night because she wants him and she frets that he only comes along because she never leaves the lights on and he can pretend. But he mutters her name through it all.
She appreciates that.
She doesn't need him to tell her he loves her. She figures she does that enough for the both of them. He finds himself splintering at times but she's there and he's there and they are a "we". A collective. Marie always wanted to be married, but she figures he's the closest she's going to get. Stein never wanted to get married, but he'd tolerate wearing a ring with her name on it. She knows it and he knows it more. He wouldn't understand it, but everyone knew he cared about her.
That was enough for her, sometimes.
She loves him. It aches in her. It makes her feel stretchy and sick and feverish. She finds him horrifying and hellish sometimes, sad and weird. And she still loves him. It would be nice if he reciprocated, but she thinks he doesn't know how.
And it burns so badly that she wants to scream. But he leans on her. He carries her home when she twists her ankle. He lets her keep the couch. He folds the blanket she lays on his shoulders neatly and places it on her bed. He listens to her. He lets her in.
Marie remembers the traditional vows. She waits for his health.
She figures they've both had and held each other through sickness just a tad too long.
She feels life in her before anyone else can sense it. She just knows. And she knows that he knows. In her belly, she can practically feel the genetic material knot together and multiply. She wants it to because she wants it. Wants to keep it. Whether he does or not.
He isn't an affectionate man. She stepped into whatever it was they had knowing that. So she was startled when he set a hand on her belly.
It was gentle. It was warm. It was a declaration.
Stein was the one who put things back together. His entire body was a quilt of skin: he ripped and he repaired. What he flayed open he usually sealed shut again. Marie twisted the ring around her finger and watched him fix the tear in her shirt.
"I love you," she said.
When he tied off his stitches and handed her the fabric back, his eyes looked strangely soft, one corner of his lips rising up. "Yes," he replied, and she knew what he meant.
She called that progress, too.