"He what?" Marie's voice was incredulous as Stein sat across from her once she had coaxed him back into the lab.
"He tried to kill me. He failed, obviously, but that was the last time that I had seen or heard from them until now." Stein's head rested on the back of the couch as he spoke. "You ask why I'm not happy to hear from them? Well, that would be why. He tried to drown me."
"But why?"
A smirk tugged at his lips. "My father and mother always were old fashioned, at least when it came to my schooling. They didn't take too much to the son that wanted to cut everything apart, that was constantly being sent home for fighting when other children would pick on me. It didn't matter that I didn't need to be in school, what mattered was that they felt that I needed to be, regardless of how many grades the school wanted me to skip ahead.
"The first time my father caught me dissecting something, he beat me so severely that I missed a week of school. I realized then that I had to learn more about the human body, so that I could prevent that from happening again. I devoured every book on anatomy that I could find, and was more careful with my experimentation. Anytime I was careless enough to get caught, he would beat me, my mother watching but not doing anything except cross herself. Finally he stopped catching me, I had become too cautious, but then I grew overly confident. He caught me one night after I had finally given into the urge to open my mother up; I had thought that he was properly sedated. He didn't realize that I had already opened him up a few times until I told him as he was dragging me from the home. That was the night that he tried to drown me, my mother watching from the shoreline with tears in her eyes for her 'demon-possessed child.'"
Marie's eye was wide, and Stein noticed it.
"Surely you didn't think that Spirit was the first person that I experimented with? He was just the longest running one that didn't catch on." Stein gave Marie a sly glance and she suppressed the shudder that tried to run through her. Stein spread his arms out on the back of the couch, a slight chuckle escaping him as he reclined backwards. "Don't worry, Marie. I haven't experimented with you yet."
"Yet?" Marie was obviously nervous with his response and it drew a smirk from the man.
"I don't know what I want to do with you, Marie." There was no sarcasm, no falsehood to his statement.
"You said tried… what stopped him?" Marie gulped and quickly switched the topic, ignoring the goose bumps that were growing on her arms as she imagined being one of Stein's experiments.
"It was also the day I discovered my ability to channel my wavelength. Becoming unconscious after slamming into a tree thirty feet away is what stopped my father from finishing the job and passing it off as an accident, which he reminded me every day that I was." The man leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees as he stared at Marie, his gaze cold. "That is the type of person you want me to save, the type of person that would kill their only child."
"You said that your father did that. Your mother is the one who is sick, Franken." Marie reasoned. "It's high past time for you to mend fences with them. They're still your parents."
Stein barked out a short laugh as he fished a new cigarette out of his lab coat and lit it. "Yes, my mother, the angel. The woman who allowed my father to beat me while she ignored what was going on. The woman who watched as he drove away any person that attempted to be my friend, 'for their own good.' She was convinced I was 'devil-spawn' from the day that I was born. An unplanned, unwanted child they never thought that they would have. She may not have beaten me like my father did, but there's a reason why I go days without eating, Marie. I'm still not used to having someone who cares that I eat each day. I may as well have not existed to her once I was able to eat solid food- she seemed to sense that something was twisted in me well before I even knew it."
Marie's response was automatic, and she couldn't stop it. "That's horrible!"
"Do you understand why I said no?"
Marie took a deep breath. "You have bad blood between you and them, Franken, but you have to fix it. You can't have that blemish on your soul when you die; that you let your mother die when you could have done something about it," she looked him straight in the eye before continuing, "if you don't make this right, you'll regret it. Despite how horrible your childhood was, they are still you parents and she needs you."
Stein stared at her in disbelief. "You have to be kidding, Marie."
"I'm not. You're not a monster. You're not a twisted person. You were hurt when you were younger, and now you have the opportunity to forgive that hurt, to reunite with the people who caused it." Marie reached out suddenly, grabbing his hand, her eye pleading. "Not many people get this opportunity, Franken. You have to take it."
He stood, pulling his hand from hers and stubbing the cigarette out in the ashtray beside the couch before moving towards the front door.
"Franken, where are you going?" Marie asked, standing as well.
"To clear my head." With that he was gone, leaving just the butt of his cigarette and Marie behind him.
Fanny opened her eyes to see Father Nicolas standing over her bed. "Father?" The old woman asked, trying to sit upright, but the priest's hand gently but firmly held her shoulder down.
"Rest, sister. Your husband wanted us to look after you, it seems that he may have found your son and is going to him to beseech his aid." The father's voice was low and warm.
"William always has done everything to take care of me." Fanny smiled weakly.
The father shared a look with the nun sitting at the foot of Fanny's bed as the old woman drifted back to sleep.
"She seeks the help of Satan himself." The nun said, crossing her chest.
The priest nodded; a sad look in his eyes. "Her mind is going with the illness. She remembers not the fear and pain the child caused them both, and has convinced her husband into going after him."
"Did you know the child, Father Nicolas?"
The priest crossed himself before answering. "I only met the devil-spawned child once. It was then that I told William he needed to free himself and Sister Fanny from Satan's grasp."
Stein stood on the plateau outside the city, his body going through the training motions without the need for his conscious mind. Anger boiled in his veins that he hadn't been able to make Marie see why he couldn't bring himself to save the woman who had allowed his childhood to be a living hell. He understood though.
'Marie is a kindhearted individual. If I allowed it she would have filled the lab with pets instead of test subjects.' A quick shake of his head drug the scientist from his exercises, and he glanced at the sky. The sun was sinking in the west, and he felt the distinct rumble that reminded him that his conversation with Marie, and breakfast, had been quite a few hours ago. Weariness settled in with that realization and Stein walked with heavy steps back to the lab.
The door slid open and Stein was already speaking. "Marie, I apologize for leaving-" another presence registered and Stein's head shot up, taking in the scene in front of him.
An elderly man with grey hair and blue eyes was sitting across from an obviously very agitated Marie. An undrank glass of tea sat in front of her, the man's tea was nearly empty. Rage flooded through the scientist and he immediately moved to stand between the man and Marie.
"What the hell do you think you're doing coming here?" Stein snarled.
"Is that anyway to greet your father, Franken?" The old man asked simply.
"You're not my father. She isn't my mother. Get out."
The old man stood to his feet, his back and legs cracking as he did so. "Can you live with this, Franken? Ignoring the dying pleas of your mother?"
"Just like you ignored my pleas for air when you were holding me underneath the water?" Marie's hand rested on his shoulder as his wavelength crackled around his right hand.
"She's convinced that you will. That you'll let her die."
"She was willing to let me die. Get out."
"Stein… don't do this." Marie's voice was quiet, meant for his ears only, and he glanced over his shoulder at her.
"Listen to your little woman." William Stein interjected, leaning heavily on the cane that had been sitting just out of sight beside the couch. "At least she has some common decency."
"Unlike yours." Stein said with a sneer.
Old habits are hard to break, and the cane flashed towards him in a blur, but Stein easily avoided the attack, stepping to the side. This left Marie unprepared for it, and the cane caught her in the side of the face, spinning the woman around and to the ground.
The moment hung in the air as William realized the severity of his action, a red mark that was swiftly turning purple appearing on Marie's cheek, her eye obviously blacked and her nose possibly broken. The old man looked up just in time to see the fist coming for his stomach, Stein's wavelength crackling around it even as Marie's scream pierced the air.
"Franken, don't!"
A/N: The second installment. I hope this explains a little bit more. I believe that the Priest was able to sense the madness laying (dormant or not) in Stein, hence his reaction to him. I don't own Soul Eater.
