A Matter of Names

A Matter of Names
Offshoot of What it Means to Lose Control. Again.


After two weeks, she decided that she had the right to use his first name. She didn't expect him to appreciate such a sign of intimacy, necessarily; he still rarely called her by name, and never with affection, just in desperate rage when his sanity visited him or in panic Medusa please, please when he thought she really was going to kill him. Instead he called her witch or, more often, nothing at all, as if trying to forget whose control he was under.  
Thus far, she had called him Stein or Doctor. The latter reminded him of his affinity for cutting people up, and its formality emphasized the irony that she knew pained him—that he, so brilliant, had fallen into her hands, and that she could be so polite while robbing him of every last bit of dignity he had. But to call him by his first name would be to take a new liberty, to invade a new level of intimacy that not even his colleagues touched.  
To the best of Medusa's knowledge, there was only one person who ever called him by his given name, and that was all the more reason for her to claim this right.  
So one night, before dinner, she went to the corner of her lab that she'd granted to him and stroked his hair gently to make sure his eyes were on the real world. "It's time to eat, Franken."
She couldn't jump backwards in time. In an instant, he'd caught her by the neck and shoved her down against the table.  
"You don't get to call me that."
She pried his fingers loose and then shoved him away with the flat of her tail, rubbing her throat as she straightened. "I will call you anything I want," she said, eyes narrowed.
"Not that."
"Try to stop me."
"Easy." Malice gleamed in his eyes. "You don't want me thinking of her every time you say my name."
Her tail flew at him and stopped just short of his throat, but he didn't even flinch. A crooked smirk spread across his face. "If that's not true, then you're right.  I've got no way to stop you."
She did not lower her tail. "I could kill you like this, you know. Franken."
But he was right; the word soured in her mouth like bile. She had the sudden, fierce, utterly mad urge to slice off his head and watch his body slump over—
"You could. But then I'd die with her name on my lips."
A shudder passed through her, and the violent urge flared again, and with it or contrary to it came the urge to push him down, wrap around him, seal off his lips with hers, remind him that she and no one else owned him. But she was not thinking rationally. He was close to besting her here, and if she lost her composure then victory would be his.
She turned her gaze cold and lowered her tail. "I'll make you forget about her."
"Not by using my first name, you won't," he chuckled.
Medusa strode past him towards the library's entrance. She could hear Stein following behind her, but once she'd gotten out the door she closed it behind her and locked it.
"…Dinner?" came Stein's voice after a moment, slightly muffled by the heavy door.
"Not tonight, Doctor Stein," she replied, and went to eat alone.