Title: Monochrome
Challenge: Swallow
Fandom: Soul Eater
Pairing: None
Characters: Chrona Gorgon, Medusa Gorgon, Ragnarok
Rating: T
Genre: Angst/Drama/Family
Length: 826
Content Notes: Depictions of emotional and physical abuse, murder, and the implied misgendering and enbyphobia towards a nonbinary character for anyone uncomfortable with that.
Author Notes: Always was so heartbroken by Crona's backstory and fate...
Summary: The thing about being raised by a Gorgon sister is that you're not a child but a test subject and a Gorgon is not your mother but your master. (Or, 10 ways Crona was affected by the abuse they endured from Medusa. Pre-Canon. Angst. Character/Relationship Study.)

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I.

THE THING ABOUT BEING RAISED by a Gorgon sister is that you’re not a child but a test subject and the Gorgon taking care of you is not a parent but a master, so when they’re little Crona has to drill it in their brain quickly that they’ll only be able to call Medusa their mother in their mind whenever they’re crying for her after she forces them to sleep in the nearby eerie, wolf-filled forest for not being able to meet their daily killing status quo.

 

II.

Crona used to hate the color black on either their blood and dresses or Medusa’s scales and jumpsuits, but they get locked in lightless rooms for nights on end so much that it eventually becomes the only color they’re looking forward to seeing a lot of if only because they can pretend they’re in a void where no one can harm them, even as Ragnarok mocks them and cuts at their lean and fragile legs until they can’t stand.

 

III.

When Crona gets older and eventually the permission to be allowed to walk alone to the nearby shopping district, sometimes they pass by a pet store and see cute, white rabbits and wonder how it would be if they were allowed to have animals as pets rather than as lessons on how to remove themselves from the concept of guilt and sympathy. 

 

IV.

“If you so much as think of hesitating to kill any of the six targets, don’t bother coming back,” Medusa warns them the first time they go on a mission, and Crona makes sure to accomplish the assignment perfectly and then obtain a few extra souls for good measure, because if they can’t be able to be with their mother master there’s nowhere for them to be at all.

 

V.

The taste of the black blood Medusa forces Crona to swallow back down whenever they throw up from extra experiments gone wrong or extreme training exercises tastes awful, but enough times being hit with vector arrows and redirected to their messes by sharp black and yellow painted fingernails not afraid to draw out some more cruor makes the acidic taste bearable, despite how much it still stings their sore throat and burns their empty stomach.

 

VI.

Not a boy, not a girl—that’s one of, if not the only element about Crona that they’ll never bend or change for another person, not even for Medusa who sometimes likes to purposely call them by that wrong term or this wrong term or tells them to pick a side before giving up out of frustration at Crona’s determination still standing even after she punishes them, not even bothering to lock the basement door whenever she leaves Crona there after telling the child to just get ready for another day of practicing their swordsmanship.

 

VII.

Even though Ragnarok teases and attacks them most of the time, as Medusa’s punishments for Crona’s underperforming become more lethal and blood-splattering, Crona sees a shallow stab or two on the arm from the Scandinavian Broadsword to be a much more welcomed experience than another serpent magic spell being wrapped around their neck or injecting poison into their already unstable bloodstream.

 

VIII.

The few times Crona begged for Medusa to stop hitting them, they received only rougher lashes in response for asking for mercy and then a few more for retracting their decision to beg for mercy, so when they start getting better at gathering souls of civilians Crona remembers to kill with one strike if the human accepts his or her fate head on and with two strikes if they scream for help.

 

IX.

Just because witches are being hunted down by the dozen and are now forced to work in closer circles with each other doesn’t mean they’re now obligated to make sure each other survives outside of hunts orchestrated by the DWMA—Crona learns this when they see Medusa instantly kill a weak younger witch because the younger witch kept reprimanding her for using food deprivation as a way to get Crona to control their blood and threatened to take Crona into her custody (and for a second Crona wishes the witch had been able to do that before quickly vanishing the thought before Medusa gets suspicious and Crona ends up having to go to bed on an empty stomach again).

 

X.

One day while sneaking around a park Crona witnesses a bunch of adults and children celebrating an event—a birthday they believe it’s called—for a young child and examines the scene for a few seconds before getting out Ragnarok and eliminating every single participant of the grouping as soon as Crona stares into the sparkle of the birthday child’s eyes as she blew out her candles because, although Crona had fulfilled their daily killing numbers hours earlier, they remember that Medusa told them that any sign of humanity is a sign of weakness and therefore failure, and if Crona can’t be useful for Medusa they can’t be useful at all.

[FIN.]
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