The Reason

Jane

You know, they asked me once.

"Why do you experiment? Why do you waste your life causing other people harm? You make their lives hell by cutting them apart without their consent and then you stitch them up and turn them into living monsters. Why do you do it?"

I couldn't give them a straight answer. I always said "because I can".

Why did I do it?

I looked at my watch, and lit a new cigarette –I'd spoiled my previous one due to my lack of time perception. My dear partner, Spirit, lay unconscious on my cold metal operating table. He hadn't noticed his lovely little scars I'd so carefully placed amongst his flawless skin over the past few months. The anesthetics should be completely taking over him now. I poked at his stomach with my scalpel.

"My mother always looked at me as the black sheep of the family. My father was a doctor, but in her eyes he did noble things like saving people's lives. I was just a fuck up in her mind, a mistake, a demon. I became an outcast quickly. She would always tell me that cutting open the subjects at school was disgusting, I found it beautiful. She would always say the dead animals in the yard were a nuisance, I saw them as a learning vessel and I loved them like my own pets. My father however, paid me no mind. He only saw me as another mouth to feed. He would beat me. It didn't matter if I was his son, he treated me like a slave, and I only got a small portion of dinner every night. I would talk to myself when I got lonely, as I would be too afraid to speak to my father or mother." I decided to start telling my experiment, my partner, my best friend, my only friend about my past.

Spirit's limp body gave way to my knife after a few light pokes. His warm blood trickled down his side. It was as red as his beautiful hair. His skin was cut by my tools as easily as paper under a kindergartener's delicate scissors. His blood was everywhere, it stained my coat, stained my table, stained his clothes. I poked and prodded at his intestines. They slid inside him with ease, like slimy slugs in mud.

"My mother was a cosmetologist. She loved to dress me up and pretend I was the daughter that she had never–could never–have. She was in an accident after she became pregnant with my late sister. The accident caused her to not only lose her child, but she also destroyed any chance she had at another child's life. I guess you could say that she resented the fact that I was a boy. Anyways, she would put makeup on me after she dressed me up. She told me I was too ugly of a girl to go without it. She told me my father would appreciate a beautiful girl. I never quite understood that. I loved my mom, even through all the hell she created for me." I continued.

I cut all the way from Spirit's belly button to the base of his neck. I was going to search every nook of his unexplored body. I looked at his eyes as they darted from side to side in his sleep. I wondered what the brain looked like during sleep. I'd seen it whilst the patient was awake, but never when they were asleep. I decided to save that one for next time. I pressed on his heart and watched the blood squish through his veins with force. His organs were completely exposed to me at this point and I loved it. How could I not? This is what I lived for. I had complete control over this boy's body. We were only teenagers, not fully grown up, so what reason did I have not to mess around and do whatever I wanted?

"My mom may not have loved me, but she loved my father. When he became ill, the other doctors informed her that the surgery he would have to undergo would be risky. She decided not to allow them to carry the procedure out. After he heard the news, my father confronted me. He told me that he wasn't yet ready to die; he told me that he was sorry for everything he had done. Between school and experiments, I didn't have enough time to help. He cried for hours upon hours. I could hear his moans and sobs from my room across the hall. One night, I decided to put him out of his misery." I stopped, looking closer at Spirit's heart.

I took a peek at his soul, it seemed to flitter and dance, like a candle's flame. I probed the bones that encased his vital organs. His poor body could not lose any more blood. I pushed all of his blood-soaked body parts back into his silky body. I checked his vitals and matched his skin back into the form it was prior to my incisions. He deserved as clean of a healing as possible. I sewed the stitches into his stained skin one by one until I no longer saw a gash across his soft belly. I stroked his skin one last time before I picked him up and placed him into water so I could wash the blood off of his body.

"You know, I killed him. It wasn't my fault. He was already so sick; there was nothing I could do. The surgery went as I had expected it. But the infection it caused was unpredictable. His immune system was so jacked that his poor body didn't stand a chance. Lucky for him I stopped his heart cold before he could achieve a painful death. He thanked me in the end. He told me I was everything a father could possibly want in a son. My mother became abusive after that. Her beating took the place of my father's and soon became much more terrifying. Not only would she throw knives at me from the kitchen, but she would stand over my bed with a gun at night and waited until I woke up. When I woke up she would press the gun against my heart and threaten to murder me like I'd done to my father. I believed her and pleaded that I would do anything for her. In his will, my father had left me the entire estate and all of his possessions. My mother demanded the house and the money in exchange for my life. Of course, I didn't allow that."

I washed the pools of stained blood from Spirit's body and dressed him in the most comfortable clothes that I could find in his messy room. As I placed his recovering body on his bed I felt a pang of exhaustion and loneliness. I sat next to him and petted his hair until I grew weary of this and lay down on the empty sheet next to him. I lifted his shirt to look at the healing wounds. There was still a bit of blood coming from the initial incision site. I swiped the blood off of his chest and tasted it–another experiment.

"My mother…I killed her, Spirit. I cut into her body, much like I've done to you. Except, I did one thing for you out of courtesy that I did not allow for her, you received anesthetic. I carved straight into her pearly white skin. I sliced away at her body until it was almost unrecognizable, then, when I came around to her face, she cried. She said 'please, my face is the only pride I have left. In taking this, you take my pride away. I'll never be able to show my face again in public.' So what do you think I did?" I choked on the tears that rolled down my face, and began to laugh. "Well, that's an easy question, I sliced that pretty little face of hers from her tiny widows peak to her nose and over to her ear. She bore the same mark she gave me. I stitched her tear stained face up and she looked at me with sorrowful eyes, 'Why do you experiment? Why do you waste your life causing other people harm? You make their lives hell by cutting them apart without their consent and then you stitch them up and turn them into living monsters. Why do you do it?' she asked. All I could tell her was that I couldn't just sit there and be another drone in school, taking notes without actually contemplating what I was being force fed in those classrooms. I wanted a mind of my own, while every other student sat quietly and obediently took notes without a single original thought crossing their mind to tell them that the system was flawed."

I combed my fingers through Spirit's crimson hair and smiled. His eyelids remained shut. Even in the darkness I could tell that he was sleeping peacefully. Not a single movement in the room. Not even the movement of Spirit's body in his peaceful sleep. It felt like I was completely and totally alone in this entire world. I could completely take advantage of this boy. In his state, there would be nothing to stop me. But why would I do it?–Experimentation. That's always the reason. I heard the slow, steady breathing under the sheet I had so carefully moved over him to keep him warm. I stood up and took my lab coat, shoes, and shirt off and returned to the bed. I was too tired to walk all the way back to my room or even to the dissection table that was set up a couple rooms down the hall. I just wanted to stay here all night, just like this, lying side by side without any disturbances.

"She died that night. By my hand, she died. I shot her with the same gun she had threatened me with. This laboratory used to be the house that my father beat me in, the same house that my mom threatened me, the same house that I used to beg for death to come for me and release me from the hell that I was living in for so long. I sat alone in this house for years–I was only eight when I killed her, after all. I attempted suicide once, just to see if I could escape my living hell. I felt so alone all the time, alone and afraid. I thought the ghosts and demons of my past would eventually come back to kill me if I didn't do it myself. I was almost certain that nobody would care whether I lived or died. I had nobody else to care for me or any relatives to force my scarred body upon. After I tried repeatedly, I realized my own death would be too easy, I returned to school to blend in as another blinded drone amongst hundreds of others."

I turned over on my side and faced away from Spirit, I didn't want him to see me cry. Even though he was asleep, I didn't want to run the risk of him seeing my weakness. I knew the sheets would reek of cigarette smoke, notifying him that I was sleeping with him, but I could handle that, so long as he didn't see the salty tears stream down my face as I told his sleeping body the rest of my story. I had no idea what I would do if someone saw me shedding the tears I should have expelled years ago when my parents died, when I was all alone, when I was truly desperate for someone to save me.

"One day, I was walking to school and I saw a glimpse of red threaded inside the crowd of old faces, each with the same simple complex. Except for that one red haired boy, he was different. Every day I would sit in this tree, I didn't care if people saw me; I just sat in this one tree hoping I would see the one kid with an original characteristic. I often thought about how fun it would be to cut him open and find out if he had anything else special or different that nobody else had. I wanted to find out if he was different, like me. One day, I saw the boy and followed him around like a shadow–just to be sure he didn't see me. The red haired boy stopped–I thought this was odd–and cocked his head to the side. He asked me how long I was going to follow him before I got bored or beat him up. After that, we started to become close. Both of us were outcasts, both of us were misunderstood. I tried to kill myself again at one point during our friendship, but he grabbed the knife out of my hand and threw it to the ground. From that point forward, he was my reason to live. Soon after that, I showed the boy how I could use my soul to fight. He showed me that he could shape shift into a weapon. We proved to be an unstoppable pair. We became fast friends and I remember sometime along the way we came across Shibusen, or rather the DWMA. Both of us enrolled in this specialty school for students like us. After a few years, the boy became my world. I could never truly understand emotions, save for curiosity, until then. The moment we entered Shibusen, I felt at home. I asked him to move in with me. I fell in love with him. He was the only one who I could truly depend on–though I would never tell him. I knew that my entire future depended on his well being. I couldn't tell him how I felt because that would just result in rejection. I couldn't deal with that. I knew that if he left me, I really would be alone. I would have absolutely nobody to call my family. He was my family. I was so desperately attached to him that I probably would have died if he left me. When he went to the store or when he stayed home sick, I would wander around aimlessly like a ghost. I became a mere corpse, a shell of a person–no feelings, no hope, nothing–when he was gone. On the flip side, when he was around, my heart raced, and I became as loyal as a dog. Imagine that Spirit, all of that was for you. I can't believe it, I've been in love with you for this long and, although I'm the best meister the DWMA has ever trained, I'm still too cowardly to admit it."

I felt a nudge against my side. I saw a thin, black shadow beside me and the smallest hint of red hair woven into the shadow. The shadow embraced me and I felt a cool breath against my neck. The air felt like ice water against my neck and I shivered. I turned my head against the shadow that induced the feeling. The shadowy figure kissed the side of my neck lightly and whispered, like a phantom into my ear. He said words that gave me chills throughout my stitched and scarred body.

"I fell in love with you first."

A/N

there will be updates to this story, also I appreciate reviews and suggestions :)

I DO NOT OWN SOUL EATER, OR ANY OF THE CHARACTERS.

Till next time,

Jane