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“If you think I’ll allow you to fight on the moon, you’re even more insane than I am.”
“I suppose it’s a good thing I don’t need your permission,” Marie replied tersely, rolling her shoulders as she looked down at the will she’d been told to look over. She’d written one long ago, when she was just a girl, but had requested to have it changed. Not that her request much mattered: everyone was required to edit their final will and testament if they planned on going to the battle on the moon.
And Marie was certainly planning.
“I’m your meister,” Stein replied easily, infuriatingly calm. They’d had the same conversation, more like an argument, for weeks now as the looming Day of Apocalypse came closer to them, a shroud above their heads, an icy hand upon their spines playing the vertebrae. And it always ended the same: in the air, sparks flickering beneath Marie’s skin.
“And why,” she started, still not turning to look at him, though she knew he was standing right behind her, “does that matter?”
“I won’t wield you, Marie.”
“Then I’ll wield myself,” she replied, feeling everything in her tense up. “I’ve fought without you before and I’ll fight without you, now, too. I don’t want to,” she added, as though to smooth the cull that would certainly leave, “but I can.”
He’d made the same threat before to her, too. Empty words. She knew if she came to the moon, he’d have to wield her. He was too protective of her not to.
She knew it in the better days, when he would hold her more leisurely, or even on the bad days, when he’d press her to his chest as though ready to shield her from the entire world. And she knew he’d watch it all burn if he could. He’d never been a man in it for the morals or heroics. But he cared about her too much not to try.
And yet, Marie could feel their resonance become more tried, less easy. Theirs was a connection that was forged like an electrical current, woven in every piece of them. Electrifying.
Volatile if they weren’t careful. Which was why she realized a moment too late that she had snapped the pencil in her grasp clean in half from the tension, and Stein sighed from behind her.
“Don’t get up,” he said, “I’ll get it.”
She grit her teeth. “I don’t need you to get me anything. I’m perfectly fine. I can handle myself,” she told him, spine rigid, and his pause was heavy.
“If that is the case, I’ll inform everyone you are pregnant. Surely, you can handle that, as well,” he said, and she didn’t know if he’d turned to make good on his promise but that was the nail in the coffin.
It was the snap of a whip, the crack of a gunshot. Marie stood up, finally, skidding her chair behind her before she whirled around, single eye glaring at the man who stood before her, his chin lifted.
“Over my dead damn body! You will do no such thing!” she said, pulling herself up to all four feet and eight inches, miniscule in comparison to his gargantuan 6 foot plus frame. But she’d never been scared by all the airs he’d put on before. His deadpan didn’t bother her. And his empty, foolish attempts at keeping her safe were doing little more than grating on her.
“I suppose it’s a good thing I don’t need your permission,” he echoed back at her, and the sting made her bristle, the fact that he was parroting her words.
“Will you just let it go, for God’s sake?” she asked, her fingers shaking as he looked at her.
“You’re pregnant, if you hadn’t noticed,” he began, and she could see the inklings of anger come over his face, making her suck in a deep breath. She wasn’t afraid of Stein. She couldn’t be. She’d let him in her soul. She’d welcomed him within her, intimate in every way, and she knew that he would never harm her. Not like he did with everyone, anyone else.
“Frank-“ she started, but he didn’t let her finish.
“This is a suicide mission and you understand that,” he told her, and she guiltily tapped her fingers against her side, knowing he was right but refusing him the satisfaction.
“It will be more of a suicide mission to let you go there without me,” she said, and Stein laughed, high and derisive.
“I don’t need you,” he said, and she felt as though, had he flayed her open without anesthetic, it would have possibly hurt less than that.
But, beyond it, she felt fire in her belly, lightning in her soul. She was thunder in flesh, damnit. A Mjolnir to the marrow. And a baby didn’t change that and loving Stein didn’t change that.
She thinks she was giving off sparks, sending static into the air as she stepped forward, deadly. “Do you think I’m going to that moon just for you?” she asked, and it wasn’t cold or cruel, but soft. A calm before a storm.
“Marie-“
“I am going to that moon because I want to.”
“You want to die? There are more pleasant ways to do so. Or, certainly easier,” he responded, almost bristling, but maddeningly composed.
“I don’t want to die!” she said, finally, her coolness snapping. She wasn’t like him. She couldn’t just grin her way to show her contempt. She wore every emotion on her face. “I want to help! I have people going to that moon who doneed me!”
“Marie-“
“I know you don’t,” she added, bitterly. “You can wield anyone. Whatever! I don’t care. But everyone is at stake in this. Kid is going up there. He’s just a child, Franken. What kind of adult would I be if I allowed a child to die for me?”
She could feel his eyes tracing over her face, memorizing her expression. Once, he’d told her that she wore her fury like she wore her passion. Men were poetic like that when she was naked, she supposed. Maybe he was remembering times when she was more vulnerable, less likely to curl in on herself.
“You’re carrying a child. Are you ready for that one to die for your foolish heroics?” he asked her, after a beat, calmly and rationally, as simple as fact. “Do you want to miscarriage?”
She shook at the thought. “Don’t-“
“Do you?”
“I can’t let you go there alone. And I have to…we have to kill Justin. You promised me.”
“I did,” he replied, calmly, but she could tell he was thinking of ways around it. Kidnapping him, taking him as prisoner, letting her get the first swing. Her brows furrowed.
“And I…I can’t let children risk themselves while I’m sitting on the sidelines…not again.”
Stein’s arms twitched, a sure sign that he was tired of the conversation, tired of the tension, wanting nothing more than to comfort her. She felt his soul coax closer to hers, but she denied him the resonance. She knew if he truly wanted, he could force it. He could resonate with anyone, after all, with their permission, or without it. Consent hadn’t mattered to him much when it came to cutting Spirit up as a child, and it didn’t matter much when it came to wielding.
But he didn’t do that to her. He couldn’t do that to her. Her ‘yes’ mattered to him, and she folded her arms over her chest, hugging herself.
Bringing up BREW was a bad idea, but it was true. They’d sat in the snow, half flickering out of existence while mere children risked their lives trying to complete a job the adults couldn’t. How could they possibly live with themselves if they allowed the same thing to happen again? How could she, in good faith, raise a child if she knew she had allowed others to come to the slaughterhouse in her stead?
“I’m not going to that moon for you, Franken,” she said, looking at him once more. “But I need you, okay? You’re my Meister.”
“I know,” he replied, leaning his head back, cracking his neck as he did so. Thinking. It was a strange habit of his, like fiddling with his screw, adjusting and readjusting his glasses, playing with her hair. He had hands that could hurt so much, and could help even more.
“We’ll win,” she said, trying to sound convincing in her conviction, but Stein only sighed quietly.
“You won’t listen to reason.”
“No. And you won’t listen to me,” she replied, leaning back against the desk. When he glanced back at her, there was the slightest pinch of pain in the corner of his eyes.
“I always listen,” he said, and the honesty of it unwound her completely.
She closed her eyes, sagging. “I know…I know. That wasn’t fair of me to say. I’m sorry.”
Marie could feel him stepping closer, and she felt the heat of his hands settle next to hers on the desk, his body looming close. She didn’t open her eye. Not yet.
“Promise me,” he started, stooping so he was speaking directly into her ear, and she shuddered against him, flesh goosebumping. “-that when I tell you to go, you will go.”
“Only if it’s after I’ve avenged Joe,” she said, and Stein tensed just barely at the name, starting to pull away. Not wanting to be so close to her in light of that. She pressed her palm to his back. The foolish man. She’d told him before that she would have done the same had it been anyone else Justin had killed.
But he shrugged her off, moving away finally, leaving her cold. “After you’ve avenged Joe,” he said in agreement, and his eyes looked dead, closed off when she locked gazes with him.
“Franken-“
“Finish writing your will, Marie. They’re due by tomorrow,” he said, and before she could reply to him, he had already turned around, turned away, and walked out.
Marie slumped over and refused the tears that stung at her.
For a good few hours, she felt his soul in the house, but it had never been farther from her. And she kept her hand on her stomach, as though the developing child there could comfort her.
They’d had spats, before. Stein was difficult to rile up, not like her, so he usually kept his cool, and she couldn’t help but feel guilty at the fact that he’d had to be the center of support so much recently. He’d seen her at her worst, puffy-eyed, sobbing, and still loved her enough to run his palms down her side, to bring himself to a vulnerability that felt new and shiny and painfully, achingly intimate.
He was a good man. He was just so hard-headed sometimes.
And, yet, so was she, she thought. Had she really allowed her bloodlust to leak through her so thoroughly, that she would only be content after killing Justin? Tezca had accused her of being cold, of shutting off her humanity. Justin was just a boy, he’d argued. Barely sixteen. Not much older than her students. He was all alone.
He was a murderer. Marie bristled. He was a murderer and she was an instrument of God, built to slay those who had done harm. She was a hammer upon the gavel of justice.
So, why then, did she feel so bad? It wasn’t that she wanted to kill Justin. That much she wasn’t guilty about.
Maybe it was because Stein had the wrong idea. Thought that she was only interested in killing Justin because Marie was still pining for a dead man, for the dead man who was dead because Justin murdered him. Maybe Stein thought that the baby she was currently carrying should have been someone else’s, and not his.
And if that was how he was feeling, he was wrong wrong wrong. She fisted her skirt, her knuckles going white. He was jealous over a man long in the ground, a man she hadn’t truly loved since she was twenty-two, and she was frustrated that giving her all to Stein wasn’t enough for him to squash those fears, that paranoia.
She wasn’t going to the moon for any damn man. She wanted to scream, she wanted to kick. She wasn’t going to the moon for Stein or for Joe. She wasn’t going for Justin.
She was going for herself. She was going for her closure.
She was going for the world.
That night, when she’d been in bed for hours, unsleeping, waiting for him to show up, she’d had enough. Slowly, she stood up, didn’t put on an extra shirt or a nightgown, but, instead, his labcoat that he’d had draped over the back of the chair.
When she’d made her way to the doorway of the lab, she saw his shoulders tense. Knowing she was there without any sort of announcement.
“Marie-“
“Don’t. I need to say something.”
He didn’t interrupt her. He didn’t even breathe for a moment. But she still waited for a second, waited for his nod, for his okay.
When he didn’t give it, she figured the silence was permission enough.
“I’m not going to the moon for you. And I’m not going for Joe, either.” She watched the way Stein sat, still as a stone. “I’m going for myself, okay? I’m going for our baby’s future. Because I know, when you’re there, I’ll be safe. I trust you. I trust you with everything, Franken. And I don’t trust anyone else like that, okay? I didn’t trust Joe like that.”
Stein said nothing, but finally turned around in his chair, looking at her earnest, open, honest expression.
“It’s my choice, isn’t it?”
After a moment, he nodded.
“So I’ve made my choice. And, speaking of,” she added, “I chose you, just so you know. I didn’t just fall in with you as some kind of rebound or whatever else you’re worried about. I love you.”
“I know,” he said.
He was lying. He needed validation as much as she did. But, regardless, she nodded. “Okay…just so the air is clear. Are we…are we good?” she asked, fiddling with the lapels of Stein’s labcoat, the entire thing practically a blanket on her. Stein’s expression was soft.
“We were never bad,” he assured her, and she smiled at him, softly.
“You sure? . .I just…you weren’t coming to bed and. . .you left in a huff, earlier.”
“Sorry,” he said simply, smoothly standing up, cracking his wrists.
“’S okay,” she replied, even as he came close to her once more, looking down curiously before he tilted his head.
“You’re wearing my labcoat.”
“It smelled like you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and she knew it was for more than the scent of formaldehyde and smoke that clung to the fabric. For not coming to bed. For fighting. For being a jackass.
“It’s fine. I like you, so I guess it’s part of the package,” she joked, leaning against him as he opened his arms.
She felt his chuckle reverberate when she set her ear against his chest, closing her eyes and reveling in the closeness, opening her soul to the resonance.
“I suppose,” he drawled, “even if I tied you up, you’d find a way to that battle.”
She snorted. “I don’t know, you’re awful good at tying me up,” she placated, and she knew if she’d look up, he’d be grinning at her in that subtly creepy, almost predatory way. When she’d started finding it comforting, she didn’t know.
For the moment, she didn’t care. It was late and she could feel his hand on her back, a warm, familiar weight that was pressing her close to him, and she could hear his heart beating in time with her own as their souls synced up, effortless once more.
So, maybe she was just as crazy as he was. Frankly, she’d never seen that as a bad thing.