Disclaimer: I do not own ANY of the works used or referenced.
WARNING: This story contains very graphic scenes. If you do not have a high tolerance for reading psychological and physical torture, DO NOT continue reading this.
A/N: Why yes, there are a lot of footnotes. I put them there to make everything nice and understandable. There's only 6 and they end relatively close to the start of the story.
The Locked Door
"Stein?" Medusa asked, looking up from her book, a thoughtful look on her face.
The meister in question looked up from the stack of exams that he was grading to the witch sitting on his couch. "Yes?" His tone was neutral.
"I've been thinking... Weapons and meisters can match their soul wavelengths to achieve soul resonance, but is that limited to just them?"
Stein sat up from his slouched posture and stretched his back. He leaned back into his overstuffed chair, turning the screw in his head thoughtfully. The light caught his glasses, rendering his eyes unreadable. "Normal humans with no ability as a meister or weapon aren't sensitive to soul wavelengths, so it's not really possible." [1]
"What about witches? Has anyone ever tried?"
The adjustment of the screw stopped. "No. Witches are usually killed as soon as possible." He looked at the woman reclining on his couch. He leaned forward, allowing his eyes to be seen again. "You're the only witch that Lord Death has suffered to live in his city."
Medusa pouted in the childlike fashion he found so endearing. "Hmph. 'Suffer'? You make it seem like I'm a curse."
Stein laughed good naturedly. "Bible reference." He stated simply. "You're only a curse to my sanity, my dear Medusa."
Now she looked genuinely hurt. "What do you mean?"
"We live together. You may have given up being evil, for the most part anyway, so we can be together. However, that means I spend part of my days and all of my nights with a woman who literally drives me mad from time to time. You mean you haven't noticed the madness that you exude?"
"I drive you mad?" She laughed, trying, and failing, to conceal her concern. She still had some trouble with the "tsun" side of her tsundere personality. "I thought it was you who drove me mad." A devious smirk played across her face.
Stein smiled, stuffing frustration away. "You know what I mean. My mind is..." He trailed off, looking at the ceiling for the right words.
"Is?" She prompted, the smirk now faint.
Stein stared up a little longer. He looked down, making eye contact with her to show her his seriousness. "Terrifying."
Medusa stared at him for a beat and then laughed. It sounded more nervous than she'd hoped. "I doubt that, Franken Stein. I've seen things."
"Seen them with your eyes?" Stein asked with a small smile. [2]
"Y-yes..." His manner was starting to unnerve her.
"But have you felt them? With your soul?" His tone was stern, as if lecturing a child, and carried an edge of warning.
"You could show me. We could try resonating our souls." She smiled at the return to her original topic.
Stein stood abruptly. "Out of the question. 'You may go anywhere you wish in the castle, except where the doors are locked, where of course you will not wish to go. There is reason that all things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know with my knowledge, you would perhaps better understand.' " [3]
"Bram Stoker? Really?" Medusa asked, incredulous.
"It's appropriate. You've read it, I assume. That means you know that the consequences for opening those locked doors are dire."
Medusa chuckled, looking up at him devilishly. "Stein, you should know that I love dire consequences."
The doctor looked at her for a moment. He sighed and lowered his voice to a growl. "Medusa." The shift in tone and the unmistakable anger in his voice caused the witch to jump. "I tried to tell you in code, I tried to tell you in a manner you would grasp. Now I'm telling you: do NOT open this door. Drop the subject. I wage a continual war in my mind to be with you. Don't assume that war is easy or that I am winning it."
His words hit Medusa as hard as a slap would have. She recoiled from him; he'd never spoken to her like this since her return, and he'd never yelled at her.
Before she could reply, Stein began to walk to his bed room, leaving half-graded papers on the coffee table. "I'm going to bed." He said simply as he walked away from her, anger and hurt still in his voice.
Medusa crept into Stein's room, her room as well, most nights. Stein lay on top of the sheets, clad in nothing but the cool night air. He was on his back, arms out wide, almost like da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. [4]
She moved like a shadow, relying on her snake-like stealth, to his bedside. She sat on the floor, cross-legged, and closed her eyes. She concentrated on her soul wavelength, trying to match it to Stein's.
He was going to kill her for sure, but his words had stuck with her. He fought with himself daily to be with her. She told herself that she wanted to attempt to match their soul wavelengths to see if it was possible. If that worked, then she would try and enter his mind and see what had him so scared.
In reality, she wanted to help him. She denied it as well as she could, but you can't lie to yourself. If she could do anything to help his war with madness, she would do it a thousand times.
Slowly, like moving a concrete barricade with a crowbar, Medusa forced her own wavelength to move. The more she worked at it, the easier it became. It seemed like she had been able to do it for her entire life, but had never done so before, and her wavelength had entrenched itself like a river in a canyon.
The closer her wavelength moved to Stein's, the more noise she heard. Felt was a more correct term. Noise was the best word she could think of to assign to it. It was a din that grew in volume, as if she were walking into a sports arena filled with screaming fans.
After what seemed like years, she finally was able to match her soul wavelength to her lover's. She immediately felt the resonance with Stein flood through her being.
She had heard many things about what soul resonance felt like, but none of it was close to what she felt now. Some had said it was like diving into a mass of warm pillows, others said that it was a feeling of completeness and still more said that it was like meeting God.
None of them said that it felt like having your flesh burned away and the muscle and sinew being electrified. [5]
Medusa stood in an infinite space of blackness, Before her a massive oak gate. It towered twenty feet above her head and each door was at least as wide. The wood looked ancient; it was pocked as if by arrow strikes and worn by weather.
Above the door, hanging in thin air, the words "ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE". [6] The words were simple and white. They looked as if they had been painted quickly and by someone terrified for their life.
Medusa shook her head. "Always one for the dramatic." She murmured to herself. She approached the door at a sedate pace, unhurried by anything.
Before she could touch the doors, the swung inward, revealing still more blackness, as if it were a mere gate with nothing behind it.
Without any warning or indication of movement, the gate was a hundred feet behind her. Medusa turned to look back, confused. She was just in time to see the door close, taking all light with it.
Medusa had no idea how long she stood alone in the blackness. It felt as though a decade had passed, but doing so in a second. The feeling unsettled her.
Somewhere ahead of her, she heard footsteps. They grew louder as someone neared her. The sound increased with interminable slowness, always sounding as if the person was mere inches from her face.
The footsteps ceased.
"I knew it was you." A voice said neutrally. Medusa found that she couldn't place a sound or voice of who had spoken. It felt as though she merely remembered the words rather than heard them.
"Who are you?" She asked, unnerved but aloof.
"Me? Why I am no one. I'm just the door man." The voice was starting to get to her.
A room came into being around her with the sound of a flipped light switch. The room was twenty feet square with white walls, floor and ceiling. Furniture approximating a waiting room populated the sterile space. The furniture was vague, as if there for decoration than function. They were really just shapes with color, no texture or nameable substance of construction.
"A door man and a waiting room." She said, frustrated by what were undoubtedly Stein's antics. "So I have to wait?"
She started when she realized that she was alone in the room.
"Until it is time." The voice maintained in neutral, matter-of-fact tone.
Medusa whipped her head around, looking for the source of the omnipresent voice. "And how long with tha-"
"Time." The voice said simply, cutting her off.
Instantly, Medusa felt an unseen hand crush her throat. She felt her trachea collapse inward, gagging her. Her hands flew to her neck where she felt the indents that the invisible hand was making. She tried to scream, to gag, to breathe, but to no avail.
The phantom hand lifted her from the floor with infinite ease and strength. Her feet kicked futilely as she swung around and then was thrown directly at the wall, head first.
Her skull impacted with the white surface with terrifying speed and a sickening crush as her skull fractured. The wall shattered with the force of the impact, allowing her to sail through it into the black void beyond.
Medusa awoke laying on her side like a discarded rag doll.
She sat bolt upright and clutched at her throat and found it intact. She was breathing fine. A tentative hand reached up to the crown of her head, feeling that everything was intact there as well.
A battle raged around her. Two medieval armies battled around her in a landscape as dead as the surface of the moon. Mountains of bodies lay around her and the ground was mud made with blood.
The witch watched helplessly as the battle raged silently around her. She watched as a pikeman was run through by a knight. She screamed as she felt his wounds. She looked down at her torso to see a sword through her chest. The knight removed the sword and held it high, preparing to strike a coup de grâce against her. She tried to scream, but pink, bubbly blood spilled from her wound, having punctured her lungs. The knight swung his weapon down upon her, the blow cleaving her collar bone and entering her ribcage with a horrific crunch.
Pain beyond what she had felt when Stein had cut her in two blasted through her being.
Medusa threw her head back and screamed in agony. When she had emptied her lungs of air, she looked around.
The battlefield was gone. It had disappeared with the same swiftness the white room had appeared. Her wounds were gone and so was the pain.
The beginning shoots of panic began to sprout within Medusa's mind as she spun around, looking for something, anything in this infinite black space.
"Medusa." A voice said from behind her, where she had been looking not a second before. This voice sounded like Stein's, but it had a fuzzy, faint quality to it, as though captured and played on a record player.
She spun around, seeking her tormentor. No one was there.
"He said not to come." The voice said again, this time above her.
No one was there either.
"Where are you?" Medusa screamed into the blackness.
"Here." The voice said, amused this time.
Medusa looked down. From the blackness of the floor, Stein rose with frightening speed. His hand was outstretched, a gleaming scalpel grasped between his fingers.
The scalpel embedded in her forehead, piercing the bone of her skull and sinking into her grey matter. The force of the impact spun her over, onto her back.
Medusa's eyes glazed, staring in horror at the black sky above. Slowly, the life returned to her eyes and she screamed in pain and fear. Her hands flew to her brow, finding it intact.
The witch stayed still, hoping that she would not be attacked again if she didn't move. She had tried to use her snakes when she had seen Stein coming at her. They hadn't come. She could not summon her snakes or use her magic here.
"Are you scared, witch?" The voice asked, amused. It sounded as though it had spat the last word.
"Who are you?" Medusa asked, true fear finally creeping into her voice. She was powerless here. A mere plaything.
"Me? I'm no one." The voice said, still amused.
"Don't fuck with me!" She screamed, still not moving.
"I wouldn't dream of it." The tone was neutral now. It had come from right next to her head.
Medusa turned to look and saw a faceless man on all fours. He looked like Stein, but he had no face. Glasses hung over eye sockets made of flesh and the man's mouth was similarly covered. He wore a white lab coat, but it had mere lines on it, not real stitches like Stein's. The man was a mere object, like the furniture of the white room.
The scalpel in his hand was real enough, though. It gleamed off some nonexistent light in his hand as it shot out and sliced her throat.
Again, her hands flew to the wound, feeling her warm blood shooting into her palms. She tried to scream at the incredible pain, but found her lungs filling with blood leaking from the wound. She fought for breath as tears welled in her eyes, each breath a gurgle weaker than the last.
Gradually, the witch was still for a time. As before, she regained consciousness and screamed a long, pained wail. She tried to sit up or regain her feet, but she found herself unable to move. On her chest, straddling her was the facsimile of Stein.
"My, what wonderful lungs you have." The face did not move as it spoke, the words generating from all around her now.
The copy proceeded to stab the scalpel into her chest where the collar bones meet and dragged the blade down her sternum. Another agonized scream was launched form the witch's lips as the pseudo-Stein sliced her flesh. With diligence, the imposter cut all the way down to her solar plexus, seemingly unaware of her agony.
The remnants of her shirt were flipped to either side, like the sides of a vest, exposing her completely to the sadistic visage of her love. He made two more cuts, each time with a renewed scream of indescribable pain from the witch, along her collar bones, completing the y-shaped incision. The apparition sitting on her paused for a moment, as if deciding what to do next.
"Why are you doing this?" Medusa choked as she spoke between gasps for air.
"I'm dissecting you because I want to. I've always wanted to. Since he first met you." The faceless Stein jerked its head off towards her right.
She turned her head and saw Stein, the real Stein, in chains, fastened securely to the ground a few feet away. She realized, willing her eyes to focus, that he was actually held in bondage by strings of razor wire. He knelt, held down by the wire that cut him everywhere it came in contact with his body. He stared at her being dissected with glazed eyes, unmoving. A faint, mad smile was on his lips.
Within the depths of her mind, Medusa reeled. He was watching her be sliced up by some part of him, and he was enjoying it. She fought back the tears that finally tried to flow.
"Why wouldn't he enjoy this? This is his deepest desire. He wants to dissect everything, just to see it be cut. But you, you he wants to dissect more than anything. After all, what is more beautiful than destroying what you love most?" The copy sitting on her, turned the screw in its head, speaking distractedly as he decided what to do next.
The tears born of despair in the witch's eyes finally began to fall. They rolled down her cheeks as she gritted her teeth, trying not to openly sob. She had withstood all of the pain, all of the fear, without crying, but seeing Stein enjoying her pain was too much for her to bear.
"Stein..." She called out weakly, looking at the figure nearby. "Please... please help me." She couldn't choke back the sobbing anymore.
Stein's glazed eyes slowly turned, looking into hers. If he saw her fear and anguish, he showed no sign.
"S-save me... Stein." Her voice grew weaker as shock took a firm grip of her. "Please..." Her voice a whispering rhasp.
Stein's eyes looked back at the imposter holding her down. She felt him shift his weight on her, moving down to sit on her legs, apparently content to leave her torso alone for the moment.
She lifted her head, trying to see what was happening, but the effort was too great.
She screamed before she knew she was in pain this time. She felt the scalpel enter her flesh just below her navel and move further down, cutting through the waistband of her skirt and panties. Blessedly, the blade left her flesh to slice all the way down her skirt, which was discarded as her shirt had been.
Medusa began to tremble, fearing what the next target of the pseudo-Stein's scalpel would be.
Her voice finally gave out midway through the next cut. Only weak reshaping sounds issued from her lips as he brought the scalpel over her hips, making a neat line from her left hip to her right hip.
Wordlessly, the fake Stein continued his incision where he stopped on her solar plexus and connected it to the incision across her hips.
"There, now I can open you up and finally see what makes you tick, Witch Medusa." The copy said, setting the scalpel down, out of reach of her hands. He picked up a surgical saw from somewhere out of her view and revved it experimentally.
With renewed strength from a fresh dose of adrenaline, Medusa screamed her lover's name.
Her only reply was the faint clinking of metal.
The witch looked back to where Stein had been a moment before, only to see the razor wire laying limply on the floor.
From above her, the witch hear a soft sound. She looked at its source and saw the real Stein standing next to the imposter, the discarded scalpel embedded in the imposter's temple.
"Why?" The copy asked, incredulous. "I'm doing what you want!"
"Because!" Stein grunted as he jammed the scalpel deeper and twisted it. "She's mine, not yours. I won't let you do what you want with her!"
Unfazed by the metal where a living being's brain should be, the fake stood. He turned and looked at Stein, whose face was a terrifying display of rage. The scalpel was pulled from the wound by the action.
"And I won't let you order me about! I'm not a part of you! I've been here just as long!" He grabbed Stein's throat, trying to lift him from the ground.
With a blinding fast flash, Stein sliced the tendons of the copy's arm. Stein instantly landed on the ground crouched, and slashed both of the Achilles tendons of the imposter's legs. The copy fell over at Stein's feet.
"You are a part of me, you damned monster." Stein spat. He threw the bloodied blade into the covered eyes socket of his madness' form. The body convulsed and twitched for a moment and was still.
With his victory complete, Stein rushed to Medusa's side. He placed a hand on her wounds, willing them to close. With the proper master of his mind restored, things acted as he wished, not as the madness wanted.
With the wounds and pain gone, Stein helped Medusa to a sitting position. He held her, sitting slightly behind her. Neither said a word for a long time. Medusa fought to reign in the decidedly un-Medusa-like show of tears.
"I'm sorry." Stein said at last. His tone was a more grave version of its usual monotone.
"Why?" Medusa asked, partially shocked, partially relieved. Maybe he hadn't enjoyed watching the madness dissect her as much as she had feared. Maybe the madness had taken control, like he had been afraid that it would.
"Because I didn't act sooner. I just watched as he dissected you." A distinct tone of sadness laced his words. Medusa realized that this might just be the closest that she would ever see Stein get to crying.
"I'm the one who opened the damned doors." She lamented bitterly. She turned to look at Stein. A single tear had run down his face at some point. "I should have listened." She said, looking down at the black floor.
"What's done is done." He said simply. "I know you came here to help me fight the madness. You managed that much, but at what cost, I can't imagine..."
Medusa met his gaze and saw just how much pain he was in.
"Let's go home." He said after the moment passed.
The endless black of the massive vault of Stein's mind began to encroach upon them, slowly enveloping the two.
Medusa opened her eyes and found herself again in Stein's bedroom.
"I think our bedroom is a better word for it." Stein said, cutting into her thoughts.
She stood and looked at him as he lay in the bed. "How did you know what I was thinking?" She asked, slightly concerned.
"Well, we are in soul resonance right now. If you stop, you can focus on it and probably see my thoughts as well."
Medusa calmed herself, still shaken from the encounter with Stein's madness, and concentrated. Gradually the noise of her own thoughts faded and a single golden thought rang out through her mind.
Medusa smiled and opened her eyes. Once more, genuine tears threatened to flow. "You're welcome, Stein. I love you too."
She stripped her clothing off slowly and joined him in bed. Stein wrapped his strong arms around her body and held her closely until she fell asleep.
I will never understand people. Stein thought to himself. After everything that happened, after one simple apology, she falls asleep in my arms. But, when two souls have touched, words aren't needed, both feel the emotions and thoughts of the other.
Huh.
Should probably pay more attention to my own lectures.
[1] This is supposition on my part. It stands to reason that weapons, meisters and witches are more attuned to souls. Stein is rare in that he can move his wavelength to match anyone's and all weapons and meisters have to have a degree of variability so they can bring their wavelength alignments closer together. If they couldn't they would either be perfect matches or incompatible.
[2] A joke that I could not resist adding in. It's a reference to a flash animation by Weebl called "Scampi" or "Scampi Remix". I prefer the remix, but for a momentary dose of "what the fuck", go ahead and Google "scampi remix Weebl".
[3] A direct quote from Bram Stoker's Dracula. The count tells his guest that he can go where he wants, do roughly what he wants and the only real rule is that he cannot enter locked doors. Because the story actually happens and humans are stupid sometimes, he opens a door and BAM Dracula's plot is there to punch him in the nuts.
[4] Leonardo da Vinci made a very famous drawing called The Vitruvian Man. Google or Wiki it. You'll likely have seen it more than a few times if you don't know it by name.
[5] This is more supposition on my part. Witches are the mortal enemies of meisters and weapons. It makes sense that some of the "evolutions" that Lord Death spoke of inculdes defense mechanisms to stop invasions of the soul. Think of it as antivirus software.
[6] Either a direct quote or a rough paraphrase from Dante Alighieri's Inferno, first book of The Divine Comedy. The words are carved in the gates of Hell. Dramatic, yes. Fitting, FUCK YES.
A/N: Whew. That was a tough one to write. I wanted to finally get an idea that has been rattling around inside my head for a long time now. The inspiration came from Disturbed's "Perfect Insanity". I had to stop myself from including lines from the song, specifically: "Come inside and be afraid" and "Come inside now, I implore / do you think that you can restore / the crucial pieces missing from my brain? / what seems to be the matter dear? / why do you cry and shake with fear?".
Anyways, now that I'm worried about my own sanity after writing that, I'm somewhat happy with how it came out. Part of me wanted to give this story the full, untethered Stein treatment and take the dissection to a far more gut-wrenching depth of depravity. Some of that was a pun, some of it could have been literal. However, I decided against that because I want people to read this and not want to call the mental health board on me. But mostly, I want people to get a good look at what I think goes on in Stein's mind. They anime and manga (as far as I've read) never REALLY show Stein going totally dissection-crazy. I wanted to take a look at what that would be like.
Well, assuming you're reading this, you've read the whole thing, so please review. Thanks much! P.S. I know I may have overstated the graphic nature of this story, but I don't want someone with a weak constitution reading this and getting pissed at me for not warning them.