soul eater -- pick your poison
title: pick your poison
wordcount: 671
rating: PG-13
summary: There was no escape from the sinuous coils of the serpent, especially if it wore a guise like hers.
quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius.
whom the gods would destroy, they first make insane.
After the entire catastrophe within the bowels of Shibusen, he considers himself lucky to have escaped with his life.
Despite the fact that he clearly recalls cleaving the witch in half - fervid flash of silvered metal and glinting snake-eyes stretched wide in mockery, he is certain of having erased her from the face of the earth - the seeds of doubt are persistent, and burrow deep within the recesses of his brain; paranoia takes root within his addled mind, and though he attempts to banish the mental images of her in her final moments, he remembers.
He remembers the triumphant smile which spreads across her features like phenolphthalein diffusing through an acidic solution - how droll, she would laugh at him, injecting science into his recollections like this - every bit as vibrant as the indicator which sloshes sluggishly at the bottom of a conical flask. A smile that spreads like an oil slick, noxious and foul, until all he can see before him are her lips, twisted into a mocking crescent, and the forked tongue which flickers tauntingly at him from between bared teeth.
He remembers her body, supple and lissom, arched temptingly around his own, like the sinuous coils of a snake; her warmth is reassuringly real when pressed against him, and he almost - almost - falls for her ruse, until he remembers at the last moment, and tightens his grip on the shaft of his weapon, forcing himself to stare down at his own whitened knuckles and ignore her coercive whispers.
He remembers the euphoric glint in her tawny eyes - so much like a cat’s, amber-gold, but yet like a snake’s, unblinking and slit-pupiled, watching his every move. Eyes which gleam with barely-suppressed, victorious lust, even as he swings the scythe, and slices her into two.
Last of all, he remembers her laughter: if his mind allowed him to dismiss the rest of the illusion, the one thing he is unable to block out is the high-pitched cadence of her laughter, ringing hollowly within the depths of his skull. He sees Medusa throw back her head and scream with derisive mirth, even as he swings the scythe and reaps her life; he hears manic merriment which echoes and reverberates in his head long after her lifeless body has hit the ground with a sombre sense of finality; long after the possessed glimmer in her eyes has faded away, leaving them glazed and unseeing; long after the squirming arrow-shaped droplets of her blood have stopped raining down around him, leaving him standing in a puddle of her lifeblood, barking out the same deranged laughter she did before.
In the labyrinthine basement, he knows that even though they have both made their move, and he is the one that deals the final blow in their fatal spar, Medusa is the one who has him backed into a corner.
Checkmate.
He can almost see her distorted, snake-like features before his eyes, can nearly visualise the broad sneer which is painted lavishly across her features. During her penultimate seconds, when they both laugh in tandem like a pair of demented hyenas, he realises that it was only then that he had lost their little game of chess.
The serpent-queen sacrifices herself, and leaves Stein at the mercy of the resurrected demon king. It is only a matter of time before the game begins afresh, and once again, he is playing as a pawn, with well-nigh nothing to lose.
In the loneliness of his empty, sterile house - devoid of all the trappings that would classify it as a home - he lights fat black candles and lines them in a row on his coffee table, gazing absently at the burning tapers as they sink lower and lower into the melting wax.
“Treacherous snake bitch,” he mutters shakily to himself, twisting the bolt on his head until he hears it click into place. “Even though you’re dead, you still have to screw with me.”
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