Edits posted, 5/4/11.

His moments of lucidity were mercifully rare. Most of the time, he was unaware of thinking or of not thinking, content to be driven by Medusa's quiet, smiling suggestions or the urges within him. To appease his still-fierce curiosity, Medusa allowed him access to her library. It was full of blasphemy (by Death's standards) and information he had never encountered before—and yet very rarely did he manage to retain anything he read. Nothing was connecting in his mind anymore. Once he read the same sentence over and over and over again, for a whole day, and the instant Medusa touched his shoulder for dinner he forgot what the sentence had been about.

When he was not in the library, he ambled through the rest of Medusa's home, usually winding up in her lab. He was fascinated by her experiments—had always been fascinated by her experiments, even back when he was sane and on the side that didn't suit him. He'd had to remind himself, back then, that he felt neither interest in the theory nor admiration for her execution of the black blood, but horror at what she'd done to her own child. He'd forbidden himself to get anywhere near Crona. Now Medusa wouldn't let him near Crona, either, for fear that he would contaminate her ongoing research. So instead he rooted messily through her older notes and materials, feeling an excitement deep in his gut at the sheer immorality of her work.

Sometimes he left her things in disarray, a small act of rebellion. And she scolded and punished him in return, but it felt unnecessary. He did not—could not—forget that he was under her control. There was cool dominance in her eyes that always reminded him: he was alive by her choice. And when her touch lingered too long on his face, her eyes too intent, he knew that she was weighing her desire to destroy him. He wondered how long he would last if one day she said "yes" rather than "no" to that desire. Part of him itched to find out.

It was like that every time she took him to bed, too: they were never sure up until the last minute whether they were trying to kill each other or making love. They used nails and teeth, her snakes and his scalpels, if they were handy, and they battled for dominance and each tried to take more than the other was willing to give. It was violence, mutual rape, often almost murder—but in the end, they always settled on just sex because it felt so good to play like this and they suited each other too perfectly to waste.

And on the days when he was too far gone to fight, she still knew how to evoke a response from him. She focused her attentions on the places where she had hurt him: the hole she'd put through his stomach, the imprint of her teeth at his neck, the lesions on his arm where she'd ripped Marie away. She was gentle, almost loving, in her caresses. It was a reminder of everything she could do to him; it was a threat and a comfort. When he shook, mesmerized by her control over him, her touch became even softer—maddeningly so, until he dragged her close and demanded more.

And when it was over, when Medusa rested her head near his neck as their bodies calmed, he had a moment of clarity or perhaps the worst insanity of all and thought that maybe he belonged here and was meant to belong to her. Maybe he was happy here. Maybe he was at peace.

But.

There were always those other moments.

Those rare but devastating moments of sobriety, when the darkness cleared from his mind and Stein remembered who he was, who he was supposed to be, who he had decided to be long ago when he'd been given the choice between a long life in servitude and a likely early death in freedom. His moral framework—artificially constructed—tried to reestablish itself. His limits snapped back into place, and horror at what he was doing overcame him. I can't be here. Medusa is a vile woman, a witch, a monster who is preying on me like she would on any other weakened creature. I said I would fight against this part of me—

He tried to stay calm, but with Ashura free the world was steeped in fear, so it never took long for desperation to sink into him. So then he rushed to the door of his room—it was not a cell, or at least it did not seem like a cell when he was fine with being there—and he found it locked, so he shouted for his lover-captor-enemy. She never came, not when he was like that, not after the first time when he'd almost slashed her throat with a scalpel. So he tried the door again and then shouted invectives at her. He screamed and ranted and swore and in the process, in his fervor, he forgot what he was shouting about and the moment of sanity passed and when he realized it, it was almost funny so he began to laugh even as he kept pounding on the door. And then Medusa came to him at last. She unlocked the door and came in and pushed his shaking body onto the bed and fucked him until the last wisps of his sanity faded. She fucked him until he wanted it, until it was all he wanted, until desire for her and her confident madness choked out everything else. And when she knew she had his attention, her lips curled into a lazy smile and she whispered into his ear:

Why don't you stop trying? There's nowhere for you to go back to.

There's no one for you to go back to.

They don't want you back.

That's why they haven't come for you.

They've given up on you.

You're the only one who still thinks you can be saved.

And that's why you'll be so—much—happier when you give up these attempts.

You'll be happier if you accept it:

You're mine.

And I am your last hope.