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Medusa had gone through far too much in her life to miss the quivering presence in the far entrance of the room. She waited patiently, but after several minutes of quietly reading the diary while watching her visitor from the corner of her eye, she figured it was best to acknowledge them, "Yes, Crona? Is there something I can do for you?"
The pink haired boy jerked in place and began frantically shaking his head, "Oh, no, I didn't mean to be a bother! I'm sorry!"
"You're not a bother. What are you doing up so late?"
He shifted in place, left hand coming up to clutch at his right arm as he looked away, "I just... Maka's having a nightmare." She began to get up when he put both hands out and frantically waved them back and forth, "No! I mean- she... she can't be touched when it happens, and she doesn't like me watching her... hurt. So I- I... I came out to- to..."
"Help the time pass."
He looked away again and went back to holding himself, "Yes..."
Medusa's heart clenched. Oh, baby... how many years have you had to hug yourself because there was no one else to do it? The golden blonde put the diary aside and picked up the bottle of nail polish she'd forgotten when she'd become too absorbed in the past, "Would you like to come join me on the couch here?"
He wavered back and forth, shifting from foot to foot, "I guess. I mean- if it doesn't-"
She smiled at him, "I'm not bothered, Crona. Come sit with me. I could use some help anyway." He crept out from the shadow of the hallway and into the living room proper, inching closer and sitting on the couch as far as he could possibly get from her while still technically being on the same piece of furniture. Her smile was genuine and honestly amused that time as she glanced over at him, "You can come closer if you'd like. I promise I don't bite." He crept closer by increments and when he was finally on the cushion next to hers, she smirked, "Much." she added before audibly snapping her teeth together.
Instead of flinching away like she more than half expected him to, Crona smiled back and let out a short, cute little giggle. The moment Crona relaxed was a visible thing. Before, his whole body was rigid, shoulders tensed, hunched, leaned back warily; always waiting for the next strike to come at him and ready to curl up defensively in an instant. Then his entire form just melted back against the back of the sofa, shoulders lowering and leaning forward a little, even daring to place a foot on the cushion so he could hook his threaded fingers around his knee, head tilted like a puppy, "You sound like Maka."
"I am going to take that as a compliment. It was meant as one, right?"
Crona nodded enthusiastically, "The best!"
She chuckled and shook the bottle again, "I thought so. So, would you like to help me and learn how to paint nails?"
He leaned forward just a little, still firmly within the bounds of his own square of cloth-covered foam, "Paint?"
She hummed and held the bottle of black polish out to him and the light, "Uh-huh. I just finished cleaning them earlier and need to refresh them. I always have a little trouble with my non-dominant hand, though. So would you like to learn?"
"O-okay."
She jerked her head, "Come closer, then. This takes practice, concentration, and hand's-on teaching. I'll show you how to do it, then you try, okay?"
"Okay..." He scooted closer, until they were almost side-by-side.
Carefully, slowly, fully conscious of just how fragile the trust was on which she was building, Medusa closed the space between them and put her arm around Crona, drawing him closer as if she were sharing a secret. The pink haired boy completely stiffened in her hold like a statue, not daring to move a muscle. If he were any tenser, Medusa was certain he'd have fractured in her arms. Instead of giving him space, pulling away from him, she hummed softly under her breath.
Crona's head whipped up so fast he'd have smacked her on the chin if she hadn't raised her head, "Wh-where did you learn that?"
Medusa had a feeling she knew exactly where he'd heard the tune before, "It's a lullaby my best friend used to sing to me when I was upset. She had an amazing voice and talent for singing. I always mangled it when I tried the same, but I can hum pretty well." He was quiet for several minutes and she began humming again. Medusa let the matter rest for the time it took her to hum the whole thing once, then held her palm out, "Hand?" Something inside Medusa stilled and she breathed in sharply when Crona placed his hand trustingly in hers.
Dark eyes looked up at her questioningly, but she just smiled down at him and opened the bottle of black, balancing it on her thigh expertly while she held his hand with her left and swiped the brush over his nails with her right, not missing a bit or fumbling at all with long years of practice under her belt. When his hand was finished and the pink haired teen admiring the way they shone in the light, she moved away just enough to be able to take care of her own, their sides still pressed together.
Crona looked at her again and she shrugged, "I'd let you practice on my toes, too, but I don't even use separators because I wiggle them so much they just get in the way. Even if you had the steadiest hand, I'd probably wind up with all-black toes." she demonstrated the way she could wiggle all her toes individually and at once as her new pupil watched wide-eyed. When she was done, Medusa handed him the bottle, "Here you go. Just be very careful not to get this polish in any open wounds or mucus membranes until it's dry."
"Why?"
An actual question: she was making progress! "You see the rainbow shine our nails have?" Crona held his hand up to the light and nodded, the multihued shimmer looking like nothing so much as the rainbow effect light had on spilled oil, "It's because I make this polish myself, and I use snake venom. I just love what it does to the color, and it's perfectly safe- when it's dry."
Once again surprising her: instead of being repelled as she thought he would be, Crona just nodded and carefully -almost reverently- opened the bottle. Medusa leaned her head against his as she let him paint her finger nails. She couldn't help smiling at the intense focus he put into it, excruciatingly careful to cover each nail entirely without getting any on her skin. His face reminded her very much of the same one Kami would make when they used to do each other's nails back during their school years. Her best friend always had complained about her overwhelming love of the color black, and now she was imbuing Kami's children with that same 'affliction'. Medusa wanted to snicker at the thought of the other blonde's reaction to such news.
Crona finished her hands, then did his remaining one before handing the bottle back to her and being careful not to get the wet polish on the upholstery. Medusa had no such compunctions, going cross-legged without a care if she smeared black across the cushions as she turned so she could reach Crona's toes before he could pull away. He squeaked in a way that made her want to just hug him as she plucked his foot from the couch to gain access to her targets. It was very tempting to run a nail across his instep to see if he was as ticklish and squirmy as Kami used to be, but Medusa restrained herself admirably.
Instead, she chose to distract him while she worked so he wouldn't wiggle around too much, "Is there anything you'd like to ask me, Crona?" She didn't even have to look up to see his head-shake, "It's okay, I don't really care how personal it is. I took you in, after all, you're essentially mine. You deserve to know whatever you'd like about the person taking care of you."
"Um... w-well..."
"Okay then, how about I just start talking, and you can just stop me anywhere and ask about the parts that interest you?"
"O-okay."
"Hmm. Well... Let's see. I'm a natural blonde." She grinned up at him before going back to her task, "I'm a Witch. The Snake Witch to be exact, and the one-time apprentice of Lord Death. Not that I was practicing to be Lady Death or anything, but we needed something to tell all the old windbags when Lord Death took me in all those years ago."
"T-took you in? Y-you were-"
"Like you and Maka? In a way. I imagine we have more in common than you'd think- and yet probably even more different."
"What... what was it like?"
"What? Living with Lord Death? Or do you mean before?"
"...before."
"Before, hmm? I'm sure you must have heard of this in classes since it's such recent history, but Witches used to be killed on sight. Our souls were prone to being steeped in dark power from our Arts, and, combined with the swirling chaos of ninety-nine Kishin souls, the final stepping stone to pushing a Death Weapon Meister that final step to becoming an Ultimate Weapon. No one seemed to have any issue with it: killing Witches. We were considered as evil as the Kishin. Growing up in that time, you had to understand that the Reaper and his Weapons were like bogeymen for us: not caring who you were, your age; all that mattered was you had the taint of magic on you and it was a death sentence.
"Even with the instinctual magic of Soul Protect to hide you, we lived in a constant state of fear, terrified of being found out and killed for something we had no control over. That's why so many Witches lived alone out in the wilderness: less chance of trusting someone that shouldn't be and being turned in for the 'well-being of the public'. Few had a choice about using their magic for Shadow Practices. We were in the middle of a war we hadn't even started- or at least that none of us younger generation had any choice about.
"It was into this world I was born, a soldier in a fight I didn't care about. My mother- well... She wasn't much of one, but it wasn't like I knew anything different. She wasn't looking for daughters so much as a worthy apprentice to take up her powers and cause when she died. And her thoughts on the matter were thus: the more she had, the better chance she had of finding a worthy one. I already had one older sister when I was born, and we hated each other from the first: opponents in the war to gain our mother's attention, and then she had another daughter after me.
"None of us knew our fathers, our mother probably used some love spell or potion on the poor saps in the first place just for the purpose of having us. I have no doubt they'd have been strong, she probably wouldn't have set her sights on them unless there was a good chance of having powerful daughters from the encounters. Though it's fairly apparent that at least my father must have been a Weapon Meister or had the line for it, given my whip.
"You would think I'd hate her: for pitting me against my sisters in a world that already left no ally for any of us, for being my mother when I was a Weapon, too, for taking away that chance at friends and allies and a life if it just wasn't for the taint of magic running through my veins. But to be honest, I never knew my mother well enough to hate her. She died shortly after the birth of my younger sister and I was set adrift in the world. My older sister, by virtue of being so much older and more powerful than me at the time, took over everything Mother had been working on. I wonder to this day if she didn't have something to do with her death to ensure she won the race. We were no longer threats to her position, but my hatred was too ingrained by then for me to ever consider sticking around. So I set out on my own.
"I was a child, a Witch, a Weapon. All I knew of the world was that it hated me for simply being born. I knew that every face I saw was a threat to my life or a rival for survival. I knew basics, and there's a great deal Witches learn about magic just from instinct, but that meant nothing on cobblestone streets with towering buildings where animals fled and no plants grew. It was so long ago, I honestly can't remember how in the world I managed to survive as long as I did. But I remember sitting in an alleyway with my knees drawn up, staring at my arms that were so thin I could see the bones through my skin. I hadn't eaten in weeks, I had no strength. All I had was the complete burning hatred I felt for the world around me, that scorned me as it did, that cursed me to dying in a dirty alley for something I hadn't even done. I hated every person that passed me by like I wasn't even there, like I meant nothing, like I was less than the garbage at their feet.
"I refused- refused to let such a painful, suffering world win, to kill me. I refused to surrender to my unjust fate. So I got up on shaking legs, and I walked out of that alleyway. I remembered a woman up the street, an herbalist, a healer. She was a stern woman, she didn't give out charity, she believed in working for what you got. I had no strength, I walked all the way up that hill on the power of my determination alone, and I knocked on her door. I told her that I could work, that I could heal people. It went against everything I'd ever been taught: a Witch showing herself, using her magic on someone who wasn't herself or family. But at that point, I couldn't have cared less. If she turned me in, if she turned me away, either way I was dead. But I wouldn't just give in without a fight. So I bartered my powers. In exchange for food and a place to sleep, I told her I was a Witch.
"I don't think she believed me at first. Threatened me again and again that if she fed me and gave me a bed and if I was gone in the morning that she'd hunt me down no matter how far I went. To this day I'm not sure which surprised her more: that I was there in the morning when she came to check on me, or that I'd been telling the truth. So she took me in and taught me about herbs and healing- the kind without magic. She fed me, taught me, clothed me- showed me what it was like to have a mother. She was stern, old, didn't forgive anything, but I respected her and there was an affection between us. I could have lived my life there, happy. With my Weapon powers, I went out and hunted when Kishin got too close, protecting the only home I knew. She was respected, so respected, like I couldn't ever have known.
"Like I said, she was old. The winter had been hard on her lungs and she'd been coughing up blood since the previous fall. I always said she'd live forever because she was just too stubborn to die. I was still just a child, but I'd been taking over all her patients. My Soul Protect was still strong, so no one questioned me, no one knew I was a Witch. She was too well known and trusted for it to ever cross their minds. I was just an eccentric child with exceptional healing abilities. No one questioned when I started treating them more than she did, when she took to staying in bed. I was worried, but it was one of those concerns you push to the back of your mind because it cripples you when you think too much on it.
"But she finally gave up and called me to her, told me she was dying but expecting a special guest, I reminded her that she was too stubborn to die. She laughed, said that was why she'd taken me in: a little ghost-waif off the streets, more bone than meat- because I was just like her: too stubborn to give in and die. She made me promise to remember that. When the door was knocked on, I went to get it, and there in the doorway of the little hovel I'd called home, stood the lord of the dead. Everything I'd ever heard when my mother was alive came back to me in a rush, the power he held, the pure unfeeling judgment against all Witches, his Weapons dispatched to kill us in droves.
"But all I could see at that moment was a man, a man who had come to take from me the only woman who had ever cared about me, the woman I wished had been my mother. Here was the person that had cost me all the pain and torment in my short life, come to personally take the one good thing I had left. I snapped. I didn't care about being found out, I attacked him, shattered my Soul Protect. Magic and Weapon abilities alike, I threw my everything at him. I'm sure I shouted about him trying to take my mother, but it was so long ago now and such a charged moment it's hard to recall everything.
"I was no match, of course. And back then... that was before Lord Death took on his more... friendly appearance that he has now. I was going to die, there was no other outcome. But I didn't care, because he wasn't getting to my mother without going through me. Then..." she couldn't help the fond smile, "Then she came out of her bedroom. This small old woman who'd been unable to move all that winter, walked out of that room looking like she'd lost fifty years. I stopped my attack- I could hardly keep fighting and pick my jaw off the ground at the same time. She was beautiful, and she smiled at me, curtsying to Lord Death. She invited him in and offered him tea, a soul so strong that it had physical form after death. Then she asked him to look after me. Like that was possible after I'd just tried to attack him, like I wasn't the very thing he and his Weapons hunted. And Lord Death looked between us, and he offered me a place to stay. Because... because everyone deserves that chance, every child deserves a place where they can feel at home and cared for, and he offered me that."
Medusa had finished with Crona's nails halfway into the story, and she found herself surprised to come out of her reverie and see the young teen curled up against her side, pink locks spilled out across her lap as he dozed, using her as a pillow. She ran her hand over the silken strands, petting them. A warm, fierce feeling welled up inside her at the simple trust he placed in her to watch over him as he slept and her grip tightened just slightly. And I'll offer the same to you and Maka. Not just for Kami, but for you, because you deserve the same chance I was given all those years ago.
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And now that we're finally at this chapter, I can give you the pre-timeline of how this particular AU's universe came to be (in so far as it won't spoil future chapters, of course).
Main Differences from Canon - Pre-story Timeline
When Medusa was young, just after the birth of Shaula, her mother died (via Arachne or naturally), and she was sent to die on the streets, where she wouldn't pose a threat to Arachne's schemes.
Instead of dying, she survived, became the apprentice of a Healer, and eventually got taken in by Shibusen. Away from her mother and sister's schemes, Medusa grows up completely different.
(Personal theory: Medusa wasn't always evil in canon, and Crona is the result of a rape. Theory based off the Grecian Medusa Myth.)
Without Medusa's influence, Arachne's experiment to create Demon Weapons instead created Meisters who could draw the Weapons of their soul from their own bodies.
Ragnarok, born into this world without the ability to transform into a weapon, is not melted down and mixed with Canon Black Blood to make Crona's weapon.