Two notes before we begin:

1) This is about Medusa's emotional abuse and neglect of Crona. From Medusa's perspective. That's the point of the story. If that sounds like something that might trigger you, I don't recommend this story for your consumption.

2) Crona's gender: they don't have one. It has never been clarified. Within this fic, I use "he" to refer to Crona for two reasons: one, because I don't think Medusa bothers to understand gender subtly enough to make anything other than "he" or "she" an option; and two, calling Crona "he" provides for less pronoun confusion than both them and Medusa being "she."

Even casting the horrific and entirely deliberate abuse aside, Medusa was in no way cut out to be a mother. Having a child was full of little indignities. The screaming in the middle of the night was easy enough to take care of with a simple sleeping potion, but she could hardly keep Crona in a drugged stupor forever. And there were diapers to change. Feeding to do. There was the overly-friendly chatter of the cashier in the supermarket when she bought tell-tale items, how old's your little one and you know, when I was nursing, I.

She didn't care. She just couldn't have the thing dying on her. It had taken enough effort to create it.

x

She did not start abusing Crona until he was a toddler. Any earlier than that, she thought, and she was wasting her effort. And she did want him to start from a fairly healthy baseline. And she wanted his trust.

She told him that the black blood was a birthday present. His second birthday. She held him as the anesthesia began to take hold and sang softly to him, watching his wide blue eyes cloud over and close. For some time—not more than an hour, if that—she thought maybe she was feeling love. Love like a mother ought to feel for her child.

Or like a scientist might feel for her experiment.

The operation was tedious and exhausting. It took enormous effort to maintain his heartbeat with her magic, and to slowly siphon out the red blood to replace it with her precious black blood. There would be more transfusions in the years to come, but for now, it was incredible how much blood there was even in such a tiny body.

x

When he recovered, the training began. She read the picture book she'd drawn to him nightly until he could read it on his own. Until he came to her saying Mommy I keep dreaming about it. Is there a different story?

There was no different story. She sat next to him and opened A Simple Story of Killing once more.

By three, he had learned to call Ragnarok. She showed him that Ragnarok was like the sword in the pictures in his book. She watched his shoulders sag as he realized what that could mean. She had a clever child, at least.

But stubborn, too. With each new assignment, he pretended not to understand what she was asking of him. His skin grew pale for lack of light. Baby fat quickly disappeared as he went days without eating—sometimes an entire week. His body tried to leech nutrients from Ragnarok, and often they needed a transfusion once Crona finally completed the assignment. Because he always did. Hunger was a powerful motivator. The need for love, also.

Over time, Medusa became very good at preparing rabbit.

x

People were again difficult. Not for Ragnarok. He could hardly contain his excitement when Medusa indicated that that would be the next task, and she wasn't surprised. He must have been starved for souls. It had been so long.

But Crona took convincing.

"Lady Medusa…"

He was not allowed to call her "Mommy" anymore. He hadn't been allowed since his first refusal, his first time in the dark room, but even if he had obeyed at once she would have weaned him off of it as she had from formula. She was to be his mother, yes; to provide a mother's love, to be the only one who could do so. But the love was conditional. She was only Mommy under certain circumstances. She was always Lady Medusa.

"I had a bad dream last night."

The look she gave him was one of open disgust. Did he think she wanted to hear about dreams?

"I dreamed that someone was cutting off pieces of me and eating them. I didn't—" He was shaking. "I didn't want them to eat me."

Empathy.

Damn it.

She said, "You aren't going to be eaten."

"The person I kill, are we going to…"

"No, we're not having them for dinner." Medusa fixed him with a cool gaze. "Do you understand what it means to kill someone, Crona?"

"To stab, to maim, to bludgeon—"

"Yes." Medusa's face softened somewhat at the recitation. "But do you understand what it means for them?"

He shook his head, but his gaze was averted. He had an inkling, then. He knew that he didn't want to know. Medusa laid a gentle hand on his cheek so that he looked back at her. "It means that that person can never be stronger than you. The more you kill, the stronger you and Ragnarok will become. And your mother wants you to become strong, Crona."

His cheeks darkened as the black blood rushed to them. He gave a shaky but pleased smile.

x

Crona became used to killing people.

Ragnarok gorged himself on souls and became stronger.

It became harder and harder for Medusa to sleep at night as she anticipated the culmination of her work. Crona spoke to himself when he was alone, babbled. His eyes opened wide and at times he seemed to stare at nothing. His mind was bending. As long as she continued to be careful, she could snap it in the right places.

So she rewarded him for the tasks that made him the most miserable. She told him lies, obvious lies, but she was all the truth he had ever known so he doubted himself more readily than he doubted her. And at times she put him in the dark room again, not for any reason but to make him try harder. She could not let him think she was ever satisfied.

x

But what would it take for him to realize that killing was the only answer to any question that might come his way?

x

He earned himself something of a respite when he infected Soul Eater. Not that Medusa cared less about Crona, but her attentions shifted somewhat because there was new information to be gathered. Soul had dreams of a demon offering power and madness. Dreams of sitting in a black room with cheap music and twisted geometry.

What, then, did Crona dream of?

He shrunk when Medusa asked him; all those times she had disregarded his nightmares were clear in his memory. But she coaxed, she looked apologetic, she put on a soft face and tugged on her child's hand until he sat with her at dinner (his favorite, spaghetti, with ground rabbit rather than beef in the sauce) and haltingly spoke of his nightmares.

They were more plentiful than Soul's. (She should have expected that.) She had to wade through narrations of infinite lonely darkness—his dark room writ large—and of a wide beach with no ocean in sight. She kept from rolling her eyes and did not point out that one called those deserts. When her patience waned, she asked more pointedly, "Does anyone speak to you in your dreams?"

His face crumpled and he hunched his shoulders up around his ears.

She reached for his hand and touched it. "It's all right, Crona. You can tell your mother. I want to know."

"There's a demon…" he said slowly. He was looking down, so Medusa did not need to hide the flash of triumph in her eyes.

"A demon? What sort of demon?"

Pure black, apparently, with enormous yellow eyes and angular, infinite limbs. A demon that seemed to lurk in every corner, everywhere Crona looked.

"Does he say anything?"

Crona mumbled something that she couldn't hear.

"What is it, Crona? Speak up."

"It's a she."

Medusa raised one eyebrow. Soul definitely described his demon as male. Interesting. "What does she say?"

"She says I can become strong."

With a gentle smile, Medusa said, "Are you sure that's a nightmare, Crona? You do want to become strong, don't you?"

"I don't like her."

"Why not?"

But he couldn't describe why not. For tonight, he wouldn't tell her what the demon wanted in return for the promise of power. Medusa bit back a sigh, patted his hand once more, and resolved to ask again later.

x

But the anniversary ball was coming up fast, and she got busy, and then she had missed her chance to ask entirely. It felt strange to lose him. She had no skill at soul perception—it was rare among witches, and a recently acquired skill at that—but she knew her own magic, and she had felt the roiling energy of the black blood shrink back from crescendo until it was a murmur. The black blood inside Maka Albarn seemed to be holding pace with it. Its synchronization with Medusa's magic became untenable, and snapped.

The quiet seemed to echo, but she had no time to think on it. She had to focus all her energy on Stein.

And it still came as a shock when he killed her.

x

Once she had a body again—clumsy and youthful though it was—Crona was one of her first priorities. After her conversation with him, she wanted to scream with frustration. They were befriending him. They were being kind to him. Everything she had worked for would go to waste.

And yet, he was still obedient.

He was obedient though it pained him, though the pain was clear on his face. She was his mother; he had no choice but to be obedient. She would always mean more to him than the people who claimed to be his friends now. She had died and had still come back for him, only for him.

She didn't need to say any of this. He understood. For her, he would override his own conscience again and again. And his conscience was a sickly thing, anyway. Malnourished and beaten down. She was always surprised that it still survived, but then, she had wished for a resilient child. This had its inconveniences, she supposed.

So he betrayed Marie, betrayed the school that was showing him kindness for the mother who never would. She wanted to gloat to Marie, to Maka who made Crona's face light up every time he thought of her: here is the problem with unconditional love. My Crona does not understand it, and he will betray it for the sake of earning the love he does understand it. There was something to be said for conditional affection.

x

But their love wasn't unconditional, she told Crona when she needed him back. He had betrayed them, and when they found out, they would no longer love him. She spoke of horror on Maka's face. She would have, regardless, but this she could tell him truly because the stupid girl had barreled right into Medusa in her blind panic. She told Crona this in detail. She reminded Crona of the many times he had betrayed her—all the times he had refused to kill a simple rabbit, his every hesitation—and she reminded him that she still loved him, treasured him, needed him. Her love was truly unconditional, as long as he obeyed.

x

Even after all that, he still needed days in the dark room.

From outside the door, she heard him sobbing for Maka to come to him, heard him beg Marie for forgiveness. She told him exactly how many extra hours it was for each mention of their names, and that quieted him for a few hours but when he began to weaken again he would forget and he would call for them again. The only thing that stopped him was unconsciousness. He passed out six days in and did not wake, and with a sigh Medusa retrieved him from the room and performed another transfusion and put him on an IV.

His condition improved, slowly. Ragnarok began to come out again, but only a little at a time, and his usual crass attitude seemed cowed. No matter; he would recover. He was resilient, too.

But Medusa had to be careful with Crona. With Crona, it was not simply a matter of recovery. He would have to be rebuilt, so to speak, almost from scratch. His friends at the DWMA had contaminated him.

And so began her relentless, delicate work.

She asked him for stories, once he was well enough to speak again. What kind of things had he done with his friends? Did they always seem eager to spend time with him? Didn't he sometimes sense hesitation, especially from Soul and Maka, for all the pain he'd caused them? Memory was a fickle creature, easy to mold, and even easier thanks to the serum she'd added, drop by drop, to Crona's IV. She could not erase the joy his friends had brought to him. But she could tinge its edges with doubt.

She focused particularly on Maka, on Marie. They were very kind to you, weren't they? Wasn't it hard to be around that? I'm sure you couldn't understand why they were being so nice. He couldn't, of course. He had no experience from which to understand nice. And so his certainty was easy to erode. So he did not doubt for a moment when she told him how much of an inconvenience he had been to them. Maka was confident, she pointed out. (Maka was an idiot, but she would get nowhere revealing that to Crona.) How much had Crona forced her to slow her pace? Had she missed out on her studies by showing him around the school? And Marie, too. She had hundreds of students at the DWMA, and Deathscythe duties besides that. It was kind of her to give some of her time to Crona, yes, but he had taken advantage of her kindness too much. She must have been impatient even before she heard of his betrayal.

And now—well.

Crona was clever. He could extrapolate from Medusa's pitying eyes how Marie and Maka and all the others must feel about him now.

So she held his hand in her stubby child's fingers and reminded him once more that she still treasured him. She still needed him. His indiscretions with Death's underlings would be forgiven, in due time.

x

The promise of forgiveness was contingent upon success, of course.

The Kishin had been free for months and she had lost valuable time to separation. When he was well enough, when the spark had begun to return to Ragnarok's eye and fade from Crona's, it was back to work. She started with the familiar rabbits, something small and doable. Something he shouldn't have hesitated over. He did, though, and she found that this had to do with Maka. No, she reminded him, he had to forget about Maka. He was already a mere memory to her, and one colored with rage. There was work to do. Yes, Lady Medusa and his eyes went cold and he shaped the black blood into what she had described. He killed the rabbit. And the rabid dog, when she brought that, and the lion. Hesitation wore away. She sent him after a human, and he killed that, too.

On days that he fought well, she was kind to him at night; when he screamed himself awake from nightmares of red eyes and creeping, bubbling shadows, she sat with him and stroked his hair. "Shhh… Shhh…" she whispered into his ear. "Go back to sleep. There's more work to do tomorrow."

There was always more work.

x

She told him he was leaving for the Academy, and he flinched. She asked, "Would you like me to say hello to Maka for you?"

He hunched over and gave a huff. It was forced, but it would do for now. "Who's Maka?" he asked, voice cold and hurt. "Why should she matter to me?"

She kissed his forehead and reminded him of his assignments, and then she left to kill her sister.

x

Maka lay back down after the murmur of an exchange with Soul. Medusa settled into her sleeping bag as well and stared up at the ragged roof of the cave, thinking.

Maka was astoundingly stupid.

There was no similarity between Deathscythe and Medusa, none. Anyone should have been able to tell that. It was amazing what kind of lies a child would believe when one tugged on the right heartstrings. She knew this from Crona, of course, but she hadn't thought it would be quite as easy with someone she hadn't broken from birth. Maka was possibly even stupider than Crona was.

She thought of what Maka's face would look like when she discovered the deception. With a silent laugh and a roll of her eyes, Medusa went to sleep.

x

Crona had kept up his training. Crona was eager to demonstrate his training, but he could not resist one question, phrased as not a question. I bet she didn't even ask about me.

What a wonderful child she had, so complicit in his own destruction. I'm sorry, Crona. She didn't. I tried to warn you.

And so even when Black*Star told him otherwise, Crona repeated her words: They didn't care about him. They were tired of looking after him. He didn't need Maka. He didn't know Maka.

When they both returned home from their respective hideaways that night, she made food for him. She was his mother. She would provide. She would not turn him away. Had she ever turned him away? Had she ever so much as struck him? No, Lady Medusa.

He ate. His strength had recovered. Soon he would be ready for something enormous.

x

He did not disappoint.

Medusa was amazed, honestly amazed, at what he accomplished in Moscow. Had he been around, she would have moderated her response, but in her privacy she was nearly moved to tears. He had drowned his victims in madness and walked away as if he'd done nothing more difficult than brush his teeth. They were strong but he was stronger. They were deadly, but the only answer to anything, to any question, was to kill. And so he had.

She allowed herself a few moments of joyful triumph before wiping the emotion out of her eyes. He ought to be rewarded when he returned. If anything could earn love from her, he had certainly achieved it today.

x

What would it take…

x

Gentleness.

Love.

Everything that was unfamiliar to him, piled onto him like pebbles onto a scale. She spoke softly with a lilt of sadness in her voice. He was silent. The loudest sound in the room was the scrape of her fork against the plate. She'd made his favorite again. It didn't seem to register with him.

So she kept speaking, letting her words though they were soft and weak weigh down on him. My wonderful child. He was. He had always been, and now more so than ever. For a strange moment, she wished she could explain how truly in awe of him she was today. He deserved to share in her satisfaction.

But this was too delicate to risk. She could not afford to lose focus. She could not afford to lose her nerve.

And even then—

It was as much of a shock as the first time. She shuddered when he stabbed her as if she hadn't expected it, as if she had left him some other course of action. She had taken from him the one certainty in his life, and there was only one answer to that.

Everything was pain and noise and euphoria, then; he was shrieking, sounding madder than ever, lost without her cruelty, and she was trying to find the breath to laugh. She wanted to tell him he was perfect. She wanted to tell him she was proud of him.

But he wasn't listening to her anymore.