Title: Secondhand Smoke
Author: WallofIllusion
Fandom: Soul Eater (manga canon)
Characters: Stein and a Medusa-shaped figment of his imagination (yes, again)
Misc. Notes: Set during chapter 39 of the manga. No superhuge spoilers, but you'll follow it better if you've read that far. I'm on chapter 67 and won't appreciate spoilers beyond that.
Disclaimer: Soul Eater (c) Atsushi Ohkubo. I'm just torturing his characters for my own amusement. And hopefully yours.

"Welcome home."

Stein pulled the door shut behind him with a snap and didn't look towards his desk. But the problem with hallucinations was that actual sensory input was irrelevant. Even without looking, he knew he'd see Medusa sitting there, and because he knew it, she was there.

"Rough day?"

He sat down on one of the couches Marie had bought, pointedly facing away from his desk. As a result, Medusa appeared sitting on the table in front of him. She met his eyes and smiled, her eyes full of a mockery of kindness. "Have a smoke?" she suggested, offering him the pack as Spirit had a little while ago.

"No," Stein replied, his voice as firm as he could make it. But he couldn't take his eyes off the pack.

"Are you sure? It would relax you." She drew a cigarette out and held it between her slender fingers. "Equating your desire to smoke with your madness is only a metaphor you've created. All you're doing by playing this little game with yourself is disturbing your body's equilibrium. You're only making it easier for the madness to take you. Surely you're aware of that?" Her voice dropped to a murmur. "Then I can only assume that you play this game because you want to go crazy."

"Of course not." Stein finally tore his eyes away. Looking towards the door, he realized that he'd neglected to turn on the lights as he came in. It would be dark soon. He knew he should get up and turn them on, but he felt paralyzed, his limbs sapped of both will and strength. He stayed seated.

"Fine," Medusa said, "suit yourself. I hope you don't mind if I indulge, though."

Out of the corner of his eyes, Stein watched her put the cigarette between her lips, strike a match, and light the cigarette. Each graceful step was tantalizingly clear. Stein realized he was shaking. When Medusa exhaled, the familiar scent of the smoke washed over him, and he smiled in spite of himself.

Looking pleased at his reaction, Medusa leaned back on one hand. She inhaled and exhaled another lungful of smoke thoughtfully. "They're suspicious of you—BJ and the others."

"They're looking into everyone," Stein repeated what Spirit had told him.

"Of course. They would have to. But you saw the way he looked at you. He saw inside of you. Saw every broken, irredeemable part of you… You must be a prime suspect." She chuckled, wisps of smoke escaping between her barely-parted lips. "But you made him feel it too, didn't you? The feeling of being swallowed by the madness. That dragging, drowning feeling—the loss of awareness—of identity—"

"Stop," Stein managed to choke out. Her words were triggering an attack, making the madness weigh him down, and she knew it—except that there was no "she," he forced himself to remember, there was only his own mind trying to bring him to ruin and smiling a predator's smile as his grasp on reality slipped. He had to focus on something concrete; he chose the cigarette and stared into the embers at its tip. He hung his entire consciousness on that point of light and on the sharp edge of the smoke against the back of his throat. In a moment, the darkness retreated and reality came back to him. Medusa sighed.

"You're no fun sometimes," she said, blowing a puff of smoke his way. "Why not just give in? It would be easier than fighting, and you know you'd enjoy it. You said so yourself. Refreshing, I think, was the word you used."

Her smile looked kind, but there was a glint in her eyes that made no effort at charade. She did not love him. She lusted to destroy him, pick him apart with her bare hands and watch him struggle the whole time. He wanted nothing less than the same from her. Slicing her up had not been enough.

He voiced a theory: "You put that thing inside Marie."

"What thing?" she asked innocently.

"Whatever it was that provoked my madness."

He watched her face carefully for a reaction, but she only smiled teasingly. "If you think so, why didn't you tell BJ?"

"You're dead," Stein pointed out. "I killed you."

"So the theory itself is insane," Medusa observed. "I suppose that wouldn't help your standing very much, would it?"

But that wasn't the only thing that disturbed Stein about the idea. These days, unable to trust even his own senses, he found certainty in anything nearly impossible. But this he thought he knew for sure, and it was that very certainty that made him doubt himself. Believing in impossibilities was no different from giving into madness.

But he was so sure.

The door opened, and a little girl came into the lab. She had short, light hair and a vacant smile. Stein frowned as he tried to remember how such a face had come to be in his mind.

"Rachel Boyd," he muttered finally. She'd gone missing a few weeks ago. He'd seen a poster. But something was nudging at his mind as he looked from the girl to Medusa and back again. As his eyes widened in realization, identical smirks spread across both female faces.

"Well, aren't you clever," said Medusa's voice from two directions at once. Stein looked at the adult one as she ground out the cigarette against his table and readied a second one. Shaking the match to extinguish it, she said, "That's quite a discovery you've made. What do you plan to do with this information? Shouldn't you go tell Death?"

"I'm under house arrest," Stein replied, half on autopilot; he was mesmerized again by the smoke drifting from Medusa's cigarette and from her lips.

"So you're going to stay put? How very obedient of you." She sent him a look that was both fond love and scornful hate at once. "Nauseating."

He felt again the leadenness of his limbs, this time with a faint awareness that it was at least partially caused by his own will. If he wanted to move, he would be capable. If he chose to get up and leave his lab, nothing would be able to stop him. He held himself in place.

Medusa shifted position leisurely as if mocking Stein's motionlessness. "Isn't it frustrating?" she asked, false sympathy in her voice. "Limiting yourself like that. You don't like it. You're suffering."

He smiled sardonically. "And you think you can tell me I would be relieved from that suffering?"

"You don't think you would?" Her voice was a whisper, her eyes knowing and sweet and cruel through the haze of her cigarette smoke.

"Even if I did, don't you think your rather excessive interest in the matter would tip me off to the contrary?"

She chuckled and narrowed her eyes in pleasure. She knew he was lying. Yes, he feared going insane and losing himself, but he knew, too, the release it offered. It was true; if he gave into it completely, his suffering would cease. It was only by fighting that he prolonged this self-torture.

"That's better," she said softly. "Don't you prefer being honest with yourself? Those pointless lies must be so tiring." She leaned forward and exhaled smoke right into his face, and he found himself inhaling it longingly, gratefully. He closed his eyes to better take in the taste and the comforting burn in the back of his throat. He missed this. Was there anything wrong with that? One won't hurt, Spirit had said—but Stein knew it wouldn't be just one, because if one could be rationalized , then so could a second, and a third, until he was sitting there with a half-empty packet and lungs blackened by the weakness of will. Just like how, every time Medusa appeared, he slipped into a full-fledged argument with her before he could separate hallucination from reality thoroughly enough to make her disappear. It never helped. Wasn't helping now.

His eyes still closed, he heard Medusa sigh. "Is my time up already?" she pouted. Stein didn't reply. Answering the voices in his head was simply pathetic.

"All right, if you insist. I'll see you later, Dr. Stein."

And she was gone. He knew it as certainly as he had known before that she'd been there. But the smell of smoke lingered, just as strong as it had been. He could still feel its burn in his throat and nostrils. And when his mouth twitched to frown, he could feel the paper cylinder between his lips.

His eyes flew open. On the table where Medusa had-but-not-really been sitting was his pack of cigarettes, open, flanked by two spent matches and a cigarette butt. With trembling hands, he took the second cigarette from his mouth and looked at in despair, hoping, praying that this was a hallucination—but he knew and should have known from the beginning that sensations this thorough and consistent could only be real. Between his fingers, the cigarette burned cheerily. He willed himself to extinguish it. Instead he found his hand bringing it back to his mouth. He inhaled deeply and felt the burnt air warm his throat, his lungs, and he leaned back in the couch and laughed at how good it felt.