Well, basically what I'm looking at doing here is turning this story into a look, in flashback, at Stein and Medusa's relationship throughout the series, largely from scenes of my own devising, though also containing my impressions of some of the more important events. This is going to be based mostly upon the anime storyline, though I may chop and change scenes from the manga where necessary. Anyway, hope you enjoy it, and please, as this is my first attempt at writing something on this site, give what comments you can on the story, my writing style or the direction I'm choosing to take it.

How long did it take for a life to fall apart completely? For everything a man once thought he was to be taken from him? For the carefully balanced pieces that formed the elusive state of mind he knew as sanity to collapse beneath the pressure exerted by the shattered mind they hid? Even as he saw, even as he lived it; stood back and watched the ruin his own mistakes, his own desires had formed of the life he once thought secure, Dr Stein found he could supply no answer, no answer to the questions breaking against his fogged mind like waves against a shore of arid sand.

He stirred uncomfortably beneath the folds of the white lab-coat draped over his shoulders, the insipid rustle of fabric disturbing the still air, heavy with the odd scent of the two candles burning at the centre of the room. His weary gaze traced the shadowed walls of dark stone surrounding him, the high, vaulted ceiling above, his prison, his nightmare...his home now. A fortress, a refuge, hers, he didn't know where, he scarcely even remembered how he had come to be here, memories lost in the mist clinging to his exhausted mind, hiding, obscuring everything.

For a moment he tried to stay the inevitable, tried to keep his wandering gaze from settling on the one place he knew it would be drawn so inexorably to, as though by ignoring the truth he could somehow undo it. But he was so weak now, he couldn't resist the pull she exerted on him, not even for that one moment. Medusa...witch...his greatest enemy...his greatest mistake, she sat there, her legs crossed, at the room's centre, leaning in over the sphere of cloudy glass, pulsing with a deep, purple light, set within a stand of gleaming gold before her.

She was a child now, the soul of the woman who had broken him within the body of a young girl. He supposed he might say that it had changed her, physically certainly, she looked little like she had before, she had a child's features now, soft, unformed, wide-eyed, her cheeks pale and freckled, where her face had once possessed such an enticing sharpness. Her hair however was the same golden-blonde, cut to the same style, fairly short, arranged so that it hung loosely over her forehead and neck, with two longer strands coming down from either side of her fringe to frame her face. She wore a robe of silken black, sleeveless and high across the neck, cut short over her legs, so thin now, she had been slender before, but in this body she seemed even more so, so thin he felt he could almost reach out and snap her with ease, but thoughts of violence against her...once so intense, had dulled like a blade used far past its time. After all, he could not hurt her, she was all he had left now, the sole remaining thing now that he had lost all else. She had been so beautiful, so enticing once, the memory was enough to twist a knife of anguish across his weary mind.

But it was not her beauty that had drawn him first, like a moth to a flame. It had played its part, yes, silken, veiled promises whispered as they fought in the catacombs beneath Shibusen, stirring such an intensity of feeling, of dry-mouthed desire as he thought he never could experience, but her mind, it had been the thing that had attracted him all the more, and that mind remained...within this body. He slumped against the cold, unforgiving stone against his back, unable to draw his gaze from her...

Despite the intensity of his stare upon her, she scarcely seemed to notice his presence, so focused was she on whatever she sought so avidly within the clouded heart of the crystal before her, but Stein found himself wavering, unsure, despite everything, despite what she was, what she had done to him, whether her distraction represented a blessing or a curse.

How he despised it, despised himself, when she turned her attention to him, when her amber-hued eyes, wide, soft, framed by curling lashes, but with a darker gleam at their core, a gleam of satisfaction, of fierce, possessive triumph as she surveyed him, unlike anything a child's eyes could ever, should ever display, fell upon his...pierced into him, struck him to his very heart with a turmoil of confused emotion, hatred, disgust, longing, when she drew closer, ran her small, soft hands over his face, tracing the line of the stark, stitched scar that curled down from his forehead and over his haggard cheek with her fingers, leant over him, whispered in his ear, told him...that he was hers...but even as the words sickened him, as painful shudders of loathing passed across his shoulders, he understood that what she said was true. He was hers, what else was he now? He had left everything else behind, she was all there was now. It didn't make any sense to him, nothing did about her, how he felt for her, but even as he despised, hated what she did to him, he knew that disgust was only a part of what he felt, that deeper than that, sunken in the depths of his bitter soul, he longed for it, longed for her touch, her voice, her gaze, he felt empty without it, empty now, when she sat apart from him, her focus elsewhere.

He shrank back against the unyielding stone, drawing his legs up against his chest, clutching weakly at his knees with pale, quivering hands, how...had this happened to him? There had been a time when he had been known as the most powerful technician ever to graduate from the Shibusen Academy, dedicated himself to the service of Shinigami, God of Death, fought for a cause utterly opposed to her and all her kind, a cause she had done more than anyone to destroy.

But now...what was he? A traitor, to all of them, his comrades, his friends, to the God he had once served so diligently, a broken remnant of a man entirely dependant on her attentions, the attentions of a witch. And still he struggled to understand how it had come to this, how she had slipped beneath his defences, wrapped his weary mind, already exhausted by the long struggle against the insanity she had unleashed upon this world, in her coils, drawn him nearer and nearer until now, she had taken everything from him. Could he have resisted, once it had begun? Should he have? Would this all have happened still...would he have lost himself, seen his sanity slip through his clenched fingers like grains of sand, had he never returned to Shibusen after almost a decade of solitude, had he never met her? Lying back, he wondered, the bitter weight of remembrance rising at his urgings, a time long past, one it seemed as though he had almost forgotten.

The memories were distant, clouded...as though he viewed them through a veil of mist, as though they were the events of years ago, rather than the few short months he knew had passed since it had begun, but still he remembered that night well, he knew in his heart that even if he lost all else, he would never forget it...the night when their paths had first intertwined, when he had first stared into those golden eyes and wondered, feeling the cold touch of fate upon his shoulders...though he had never begun to suspect where she would lead him...what she would do to him before it was done. His head slumped back against the wall, his tortured gaze at last leaving her, drifting up to the high, vaulted ceiling of the room, clouding over with the mists of dark memory, his mind wandering back to a time when all had seemed safe, secure...when he could never have believed what his own future would hold...