Edits posted, 5/4/11.

Stein awoke suddenly to the realization that he was not in his own bed. It was a softer mattress than his, and when he opened his eyes the room was neither dark nor lit with his sickly fluorescents; instead he saw a single candle burning by what appeared to be a door. The candle was carved into the form of a coiled snake—and so all at once he remembered where he was and what he had been like for he didn't even know how long. But right now, he was sane. Right now he had the chance to escape the witch's grasp, if he remained calm. He sat up, then stood up, considering each action carefully. Already he could feel the madness creeping back in, but he knew that feeling and could hold it off for some time if he focused.

He found his coat draped over the bedpost, shrugged it on, and checked the pocket. Then he went to his door. Finding it locked, he began to shout for Medusa.

x

It was well past midnight, but Medusa was still awake, curled up in a corner of her lab to take notes on the day's experiments. There had been some trouble with the Clown's battle stamina, which she would have to address tomorrow. So absorbed was she in that problem that she didn't hear Stein the first time he called her. But the sound of her name had half-caught her attention, and then she heard bitch, and then coward and what have you done to me you damned bitch come and face me in a voice full of anguish, and she laid aside her notes and listened. The tone in his voice was one she'd never heard before; he sounded like a child in the grip of a nightmare. But he had told her before that he did not dream.

She slid out of her chair and down the hallway to Stein's cell. "What is it?" she called, her voice high and pleasant and ironic. She did not bother to hide the cool undertone of her control. "I'm coming, Stein. What's wrong? Are you suffering?"

"What are you doing to me?" His voice was ragged and shaking.

Medusa arrived at his door and pulled the key out of her pocket. "I'm not doing a thing to you, Stein. You sound horrible—I'm coming in."

She unlocked the door and pushed it open slowly—and before she realized what was going on Stein had lunged at her. She saw light flash off a blade and jumped back instinctively; the scalpel grazed her throat anyway. Hissing in indignation, she blasted a handful of arrows at him, knocking him backwards into the wall. She wrapped vectors around his wrists and pulled them just tight enough to break the skin and pulled his arms over his head, digging the ends of the vectors into the wall behind him. The scalpel clattered to the floor. And not until then did she inhale and examine the situation. She felt blood trickle down her neck as she gazed at Stein.

He must have been faking the tremor in his voice before; his eyes were too clear for it to have been real. Even bound, he was looking at her in defiance. There was an intense fire in his gaze that she had not seen for almost a week, and she narrowed her eyes as she realized that he had found his sanity again.

Under her scrutiny, he smirked. It was not the wide grin of animal pleasure that she'd come to know so well—it was a smile of triumph that matched the boldness in his eyes. He thought he'd won somehow. A shiver ran between her shoulders as the desire to subjugate him again flared within her, and failing that—

The blood trickled down over her collarbone. She stepped towards Stein and ran a gentle finger over the stitches across his face. "Look at you," she murmured. "You must be so proud of yourself. Are you enjoying this visit from your sanity?" She leaned closer to whisper in his ear. "You don't honestly think it'll last, do you?"

His breath was careful and consciously regulated. She laughed.

"Of course it won't. You're feeling it already, aren't you? It's creeping back into your mind—closing in from the corners—inevitably—"

"I don't need you to tell me that, witch." His voice was artificially calm, and he was shaking; Medusa could tell that he was tense with pent-up energy. She wondered why he made no attempt to attack her with his unfettered legs—perhaps he feared that allowing himself another moment of violence would give the madness an opportunity to take him over. How unfortunate for him that there was nothing to hold her back.

"I'm hurt, Doctor Stein," she said, slipping a hand up his shirt. He tried to pull away, but he was up against the wall and had no room to escape her touch as she arched her fingers and pressed, imagining the little crescents her nails were forming on his skin. "Am I just some nameless witch to you now?"

She met his eyes and smiled because that was one thing she knew she could never ever be. He did not smile back. He was defying her still, as if he deserved pride, and he had attacked her and he needed to be punished. She had plenty of ideas about how this could be carried out; the problem was that so many of them were permanent. Those were the ones clamoring ceaselessly within her no matter how much she tried to tell them not now, not yet. Usually, the Sway of her magic—that prickling in her shoulders and the pit of her stomach—let itself be answered by those words, but now that her prey was completely in her power, it pulsed through her, buzzed in every corner of her body, stronger and better than any sexual anticipation. She rested her head on his chest, breathing softly and slowly. She was in control. She was master of her instincts unlike the foolish young witches of today who got off on cheap, unproductive destruction. She knew exactly how hard she was digging her nails into his chest, knew that she was not quite drawing blood but that she was oh-so-tantalizingly close. She would not kill him tonight, not like this, but oh, how she wanted to—

"Do it."

The surprise must have shown in her face as she pulled back suddenly, certain that she'd misheard. But no, he was meeting her eyes again, and this time the fire in his gaze was focused squarely on her.

"Show me. I've never seen it, have I?" His tongue darted across his lips, but whether that was a calculated ploy like his hysterics earlier or an unconscious action she had no idea. "What you're like when you let yourself lose control."

It was true; he hadn't. Even when they'd fought underground and she'd had to relinquish hope of turning him, she had been conscious in her attacks against him. Not like now. Now the Sway was pressing her to give herself over to the magic within her and let it demolish him. She was too small a vessel for the power she contained.

She said, "What makes you think I'm anywhere near losing control?"

He gave a short, sharp laugh. "Please, Medusa," he said, and the patronizing tone in his voice made her catch her breath in furor. "You think I could fail to recognize your attitude? You're counting every breath, holding yourself back like you're on some kind of leash, but you're shaking because you know what you want and you know in your head exactly how long you'll be able to fight it. Do you really think I don't know what that looks like? I can see it in you as easily as you can see it in me. We're the same, Medusa, the very same—" He started to laugh again; but then he must have realized that he was raving, because he stopped himself abruptly, closed his eyes, and went back to counting his own breaths. In a moment, he opened his eyes again, and they were focused and mocking but in their depths was fear. "Why not just give in? It would be easier than fighting, and you know you'd enjoy it." He said it as if she should have recognized the words. And then, "I want to see what you're really like."

"How sweet." Medusa gave a bubbling laugh. "And tell me, just what would you do with that information in the half-second between gaining it and dying painfully?"

"I'd understand you," he answered, as if this was obvious and it was all he could want. But his eyes didn't match his voice. They shone not with love or infatuation or even the curiosity that he might claim as a more likely motive; they were waiting for her response, calculating.

…Aha. Certainty that this, too, was a façade clicked into place in Medusa's mind. She should have known; he was selfish and must have realized by now that any but the pettiest victories were beyond him. With this realization, the willpower that had been flickering before flared back to its full, familiar strength. She smiled, and the look in Stein's eyes faltered.

"Very clever, Doctor Stein." She dug her nails into his skin again, this time drawing blood because she did not need to fear losing her control. She could still feel the Sway buzzing within her, but now it was no more than pleasant background noise. "Harnessing your sense of futility to overcome your fear of death, in the hope of claiming a little dignity for your final moments by controlling yourself when I cannot." He'd tried to overcome her. He could not overcome her. She looked into his eyes and saw that the fire in them before had been fueled by hope; it was gone now, hatred and fear taking its place. Her smile widened.

"Let me tell you a few things, Stein." She whispered the words, leaning in to let her lips brush his neck as she spoke, enjoying his shudder of revulsion. "First: when I kill you—and we both know that that is inevitable—it will not be because you have given me permission to do so. When you die, you will die begging me to let you live just a minute longer. Second: you will not have the dignity of dying sane. The mind that we call 'Franken Stein' will be long gone by the time I destroy the body by that name. Consider that while I'm purging this moment of sanity from you: this may be the last time you realize you exist. And finally, Doctor, my dearest, cheeky little pet…" She took a half-step backwards, withdrawing her hand from his chest and smoothing his shirt down sweetly in a playful-false demonstration of tenderness. "Do not delude yourself into thinking that your self-control rivals mine. You have fought yourself for a mere thirty years. The Sway of Magic has tried for over eight centuries to take me over, growing stronger each time it is denied. I have fought it because I have a goal in mind. You struggle because you're trying to bow to a sense of right and wrong that doesn't agree with your own. You struggle because you are told to, and that is why it won't take long for you to give in when you have a few snakes wriggling through your veins." She let out some of the snakes that had been crackling beneath her skin. They danced eagerly around her forearm. "Say 'ah,' Doctor."

He was shaking, eyes trained on the snakes as he tried to figure out whether it was worth it to defy her. His mouth remained clamped shut.

She chuckled. "What foolish resistance. I have other options, Doctor Stein. Your ears, your nostrils, your eye sockets—how would you like to go blind and know that you'll never see anything but hallucinations for the rest of your life? Or I could go lower…" She ran her fingers along his waistband and let her pets slither into his pants and between his legs. He tensed. His breath, still coming through his nose rather than his firmly-shut mouth, grew labored with the effort it took to resist, resist—fear and carnality were feeding his madness—

He spat in her face.

Instantly, she gave her snakes permission to bite, and his body jerked as they did so and as his saliva dribbled down her cheek. But he was slack now, his shoulders and his jaw, and when he managed to tip his face up to look at her, she saw that he was gone. The erection he'd been fighting before finally rose, but he seemed unaware of it as he sniggered, his eyes rolling in their sockets. She called her snakes back into her hand. After considering him for a moment, she grasped the screw on either side of his head and pulled him closer, straining his neck.

"Do you think that was a victory, Stein?" she asked, staring into his eyes though they were darting all over the place, from her face to over her shoulder to empty air. "Are you proud of yourself because you gave rather than letting me take, because in the last split-second you showed some backbone? What an achievement. An accomplishment for the ages. Except that you don't even remember it now, do you? How you waste your efforts."

He giggled. "Sore loser."

"Foolish boy." She slammed his head against the wall. "How do you propose I've lost, exactly? I have you in my power and insane once more. You'd be falling over yourself with lust for me if you weren't bound. And…" She trailed her hands down his neck, slowly, tantalizingly, and when he tried to slip his leg between hers in response, she kneed him in the groin. Smiling, she pressed against him to better feel him shake. "You've had a bit too much attitude for my tastes tonight. You attacked me. Even worse, you pulled me away from my notes, Stein, and I was working on something very important. I believe I owe you a bit of punishment."

His mouth hung open mindlessly, ready to receive her kiss and the snakes she poured into him. As she directed them to writhe within him, tightening around his organs, stretching his skin more than it had any right to stretch, she felt the Sway pulsing through her. It was mocking her for holding back but it was rejoicing, too, as he squirmed and contorted and begged her to stop. And when she reclaimed her snakes, when she stepped back to avoid the vomit that followed them out of Stein's mouth, when she finally released her vectors and let him slump to the floor in exhausted, snuffling giggles, she looked down on him in disgust and wondered if maybe she'd let the Sway control her the whole time. She claimed to love him and almost meant it, and yet she took such pleasure in ravaging his brilliant mind and turning him into this. It wasn't regret she felt. She was puzzled. She had fought the Sway of Magic for over eight hundred years, and she had not always won. Inevitably, some of it had to be mixed in with her natural personality. Inevitably, anything that could be called her natural personality must have faded away centuries ago.

Because he was long past hearing, let alone answering, she looked down at the broken boy in front of her and asked, "Do you know this feeling, Stein?" He did not even twitch in reply, and she sighed.

"How boring you are."