Archive of Our Own

He was sitting, waiting, in the darkness, a beloved monster without whom life could not continue. The very sight of him once the living room was illuminated sent Dan stumbling into a coat rack which, in turn, shattered a mirror behind him. It created such cacophony that it surely disturbed the dead: one more reason for the inhabitants of the graveyard not to appreciate their breathing neighbors.

Bloodied, bruised and barely alive himself after the collapse in the mausoleum, Herbert West sat on the couch and watched Dan from behind broken glasses. He looked half-heartedly at the shattered mirror. “You know how I feel about superstitious drivel, Dan, but I think seven years’ bad luck is the last thing we need right now.”

And so, Dan Cain would once again hang himself with the red string that tied him to Herbert West.

--

It were as though some claw made of stardust reached down in the early glow of dawn and guided their car to that abandoned farm house. Dan made no conscious choice to go there. They were driving… and then there it was at the end of a labyrinth of dirt roads and gravel paths. It was a grand Gothic structure, and Dan half-expected to hear some old crone bellowing for Norman from the upper windows.

Herbert gingerly removed himself from the car into which they’d crammed their entire life. Arkham was less than even a blip in their rear view mirror now. Nosy cops wouldn’t find them here surrounded by woods and bramble in a house the steady march of time had neglected.

They hoped, anyway.

“Provided it’s not rotting away on the inside, I think this will do nicely,” Herbert said.

Dan nodded and swallowed thickly as he caught his partner wincing and placing two careful fingers to his ribs. He was recovering well enough from the catastrophe in the mausoleum, but the sight still tightened a maligned knot of guilt in Dan’s chest.

He shouldn’t feel guilty for leaving Herbert in the rubble in Arkham that night, Dan knew that. He deserved it for thinking he could play God the way he did. But now when Dan looked upon him in fear and hatred and desperation and some poisonous blend of need and affection, he couldn’t help it.

He’d abandoned his entire world for this cold, calculating creature beside him.

--

The climb to the uppermost level of the house left Herbert more than a little breathless, but he seemed pleased as he entered a large bedroom and study that he would claim for himself. Dan’s room was smaller, yes, but still amply furnished and just as dusty. It were as though whoever had lived there last simply vanished one day. On the small writing desk was a newspaper that bore the date 1948. The Isley Herald. They must’ve been near the tiny town of Isley, Massachusetts, though it certainly didn’t seem as though they were close to civilization at all.

Herbert pulled back the curtains at the largest window in his room and smiled. In the distance, a small family graveyard sported crooked headstones and half an iron gate erupting from the uneven earth. “It couldn’t possibly be of use to us but still… it does lend an appropriate mood, doesn’t it?”

Dan gave a short laugh. It some horrific way, it felt as though they were coming home. They were alone, the two of them, in their collective nightmare. “Well, where do we go from here?” he asked. “I assume you have a plan. You always do.”

Herbert wearily sat on a battered settee by the window. He looked very drawn; it was a pity the way his appearance plucked Dan’s heartstrings.

“Of course. We eliminate the possibility of tissue rejection. One complete body, ideally obtained and preserved. It’s unfortunate we don’t have the supply of body parts we had before. While we learned much from our girl, it’s back to basics, as it were. The circumstances of her creation were less than ideal. We need our creature to live, to thrive. It’s the only way to perfect the process and the reagent.” He arched a brow. “Also, I’m inclined to believe it would benefit us to steer clear of the fairer sex—wouldn’t you agree, Dan?”

--

Each morning Dan woke up exhausted and tied up in bed sheets. He felt ridiculous having nightmares like some frightened child, but in the three months since they arrived at the old house, he couldn’t avoid them. So, once again, he pushed himself from bed with tired eyes and aching limbs and after quickly dressing, went to find his partner.

Herbert had survived predominantly on a steady diet of pain pills and reagent. Dan knew this, even though Herbert seemed to think he didn’t. It all left Dr. West more irritable and unlikely to eat than usual. All the same, he was healing nicely and was able to help Dan set up a primitive but effectual lab in the cellar of the house.

It was there Dan assumed he would find him. And so he did, the windows blocked to prevent any light from escaping. He had before him four days’ worth of newspapers.

Some people clip recipes from the newspaper. Not Herbert West.

“Any luck?” Dan asked as he descended the stairs.

“Hmm. No. There was, however, an article about a woman who was impaled after she tripped onto a wrought-iron fence.” Dan grimaced, but Herbert smiled. “It’s actually very amusing. You should read that one.” He cleared his throat. “All the same, I haven’t yet seen what I’m looking for.”

“I’ll walk to Isley and get more newspapers this evening. Our man isn’t just going to fall from the sky. It’ll probably take some waiting,” Dan said and took a seat across from Herbert at the old worktable.

“It will be worth the wait.” Herbert delicately pushed the newest of the papers away and looked Dan in the eye. “You should see a doctor about your sleep patterns,” he said dryly. “You were thrashing back
and forth for hours—”

“Jesus, Herbert, are you watching me sleep?”

“—and that’s not to mention the sleepwalking.”

It gave Dan enough pause to ignore the fact Herbert was dodging the question. “Sleepwalking? I don’t sleepwalk.”

“You most certainly do. At three o'clock this morning, you walked into my bedroom and stood at the window for thirteen and a half minutes before walking back to your room. I didn’t dare wake you. Who knows what you would’ve done.”

Dan leaned back in his chair and tried to remember any of his dreams from the night before. Not one would come to him. There was a distinct feeling of dread as he slept, but nothing would come to him once he was awake. He knew they were nightmares, but their very subject eluded him.

Herbert continued, “Are you…” And it sounded as though he had to physically pry the words from his unaccustomed tongue, “…all right?”

Dan was not all right. When it wasn’t Meg like a ghost in his mind, it was Gloria. When it wasn’t Gloria, it was Arkham’s multitudinous and defiled dead. When it wasn’t them, it was Peru. And somehow, it was always Herbert, orchestrator of death and some vile and wonderful form of passion that kept Dan alive. Everything felt like a nightmare now. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t remember the actual nightmares. They all bled together.

“Daniel.”

“I’m fine, Herbert. They’re just nightmares. It’s nothing.” He cleared his throat. “Hey, have you had any breakfast yet?”

Herbert piqued his brows and pointed at a coffee mug next to him.

It was a miracle the man was still alive.

--

The road to the Village of Isley was treacherous enough during the day, let alone at night. Despite pulling his hair back and donning a pair of old reading glasses he rarely wore, Dan felt it was too risky to walk along the main roads. So, he crept down abandoned dirt roads and wooded paths until he made it to town where he would discreetly acquire newspapers and occasionally groceries.

The inhabitants of Isley did not stay out after dark if it was not required. Even the cashier at the convenience store eyed the purple sky post twilight with apprehension, silently urging Dan out the door with nervous, flitting glances.

Dan hated the brief spurts of anger that would occasionally well up inside him on these walks after dusk. Each spider web accidentally walked through and each clear evening that suddenly turned to rain made him want to strangle Herbert. It was the same venom—even hatred—he felt miles away in Arkham when he would threaten to leave Dr. West. He would feel guilty for it later, but more and more he was aware of that anger always simmering just below the surface, just under his skin.

He knew a way to temper such emotion.

Dan found Herbert in his bedroom accompanied by one candle and a syringe he quickly concealed in the desk drawer. His breathing was ragged, but he greeted Dan with an eerie smile.

Herbert knew, it seemed, that perhaps if he appeased his Igor that evening, it might clear his mind. He reached out to hold Dan’s face, to run a calculating finger along his jawline. He looked at him with appraising eyes, and Dan hoped it was not the same gaze which would soon grace the pile of newspapers behind them. Herbert brought him downward in a possessive kiss. His finger traced along Dan’s throat, savoring his pulse. The hand that settled against his heart was not a tender one, but an appreciative one nevertheless. Dan’s own fingers found the growing erection in his partner’s trousers.

While they were wrapped in each other in Herbert’s seldom-used bed, Dan found he could almost rid himself of that anger that occasionally plagued him. He could lose himself in the friction between them, relieve himself of that maddening tension. Dan could see his partner flushed and gasping for air and remind himself that Dr. West was human, too.

--

It had been no less than five months since they took up residence at the old house when Dan woke up on the living room couch to see Herbert standing over him in the dim, purplish light of seven-thirty in the morning. Only after ascertaining that Dan had indeed fallen asleep in his own bed, but ended up somehow on the couch downstairs, Herbert pointedly handed him a newspaper ad neatly clipped from its native habitat.

Beside the sensationalistic script was a photo of The Demon, a lean, square-jawed beast with dangerous eyes and a noticeable notch taken out of one ear.

“The Demon?” Dan asked incredulously.

Herbert nodded just once. “There is thought in that gaze beyond that exhibited in your usual slack-jawed fighter. You can see it. He’s virile with just enough intelligence.” He gestured grandiloquently to the article. “This is our man, Daniel.”

“If we slip up after giving him the reagent, a guy like this could kill us both!”

Herbert grinned. “Not if he’s properly restrained. Restraint is something I fear we’ve lacked in the past.”

“You’re telling me,” Dan muttered. His mouth was sticky, and he tried to swallow the feeling of dread that had followed him from the land of dreams and into reality. “Anyway, if The Kid kills this guy in the ring, he’s not going to be fit to reanimate.”

“Excellent observation,” Herbert cooed as he sat in the armchair opposite Dan. “And that’s why he’s never going to make it to the fight in the first place.”

--

It was murder. This was no accident, no desperate self defense. Simply murder.

It should have sickened Dan, and on some surface level, he felt vague twinges of every healthy human reaction to killing another man. But they were the palest watercolor emotions. Perhaps for a moment he was furious, but he was quickly taken into the damnable, exquisite hands of his nefarious partner.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.

(Bullshit. This was all about the needs of one Dr. West.)

We will finally be able to make real advancements without interruption.

(Until the police started wondering where exactly Eddie Pataki wandered off to…)

Dan paced to his bedroom window and looked to the cemetery. There was a fog slithering between the tombstones and over the weedy field behind their borrowed home.

What horrified him most was that he knew he would continue to follow him. Herbert contested that this was all for the best, that this was the only way they could safely perfect the reagent. He pointedly reminded Dan of everyone who had ever slipped through his fingers at the hospital. Out here, unfettered by distraction, they could ascertain that fresh guilt would never weigh on his or anyone else’s conscience ever again.

And it was too much. He was always too much, and so he would allow him to kill Eddie Pataki and bring him shrieking back to life. Dan continued to stare out the window, contemplating who was worse—Herbert West or Daniel Cain?

--

It was exactly four hours before The Demon was—according to the sports editorials in the newspapers—going to annihilate Slick Willy the Kid when Dan paused to peer into the sliver of light created by the barely-open door to Herbert’s room.

Herbert gasped and convulsed as he pulled the needle from his arm. He was sallow in the dim candlelight, sweat beading on his forehead. Dan swallowed thickly and glanced to his feet. It was time enough for the subject of his impromptu voyeurism to notice him and stagger to the door.

“Dan, I didn’t realize you were in the habit of spying on me.”

“You’re going to kill yourself with that stuff.”

“Spare me,” he muttered and pinched the bridge of his nose in pain. “I’m not looking for a lecture from the paragon of morality that is Daniel Cain.”

Dan shook his head as he turned to walk away. “Fine, I’ll go—”

There was urgency, desperation in the still-trembling hand that gripped Dan’s shoulder before he could leave. “Daniel.” His voice was level, brow furrowed. His face was placid in the dim light of the hallway, but his grip told a different tale. “I trust that you fully understand the importance of our endeavor this evening.”

They would knock out The Demon in the alley behind the bar—chemically, of course. They would bring him back to the house, restrain him, kill him and bring him back to life. Easier said than done. Eddie Pataki would die a fighter and come back from the dead as a boon to two disturbed doctors using science as an excuse to play God.

But the mad, gleaming intensity in Herbert’s gaze made Dan’s stomach tighten.

“Yes, Herbert, I do,” he muttered.

--

Rarely did things go according to plan, but some twisted deity—perhaps the wicked god that seemed to drag them to the old house outside Isley in the first place—smiled upon Doctors Cain and West that evening.

Eddie Pataki stepped out to his car behind the bar and never returned to fight Slick Willy the Kid. All over Isley, hundreds of citizens outwardly lamented the sudden turn in events but were inwardly pleased they did not have to venture out into the darkness on so chilling an October evening.

Herbert West was suitably pleased at the limp body chained to their basement wall.

The Demon was a tall, lean creature, close to Dan in height and dark-haired. He barely even twitched as Herbert clapped a chemical-soaked handkerchief over his nose and mouth.

He simply died. Dan witnessed a murder, and he didn’t say a word.

The Demon’s rebirth was as raucous as any they had witnessed, some unholy screech sounding forth from his lips. His eyes bugged, mouth foaming, and Herbert calmly looked on, making verbal observations in Dan’s general direction, expecting his Igor to faithfully scribble notes. There was a sick curl at the corner of Dr. West’s lips.

For a moment, Dan felt the same sense of awe he once had while watching a pile of blood and bones that used to be his cat come back to life.

The Demon begged in animal tones for Herbert to let him go, to leave him alone, as though he’d never even perished. He had no recollection of actually dying, just that he had been attacked in the parking lot. It was a detail that Herbert insisted Dan record as he spoke to him in dulcet tones as though the hysterical Demon were not even in the room.

--

Herbert was not afraid to strike The Demon if he found him out of line. He spoke to him calmly, delicately, obsessively monitoring his vitals, his motor skills and response times. But when the former Eddie Pataki would curse him, he had no problem letting The Demon know who was in the position of power.

He plucked memories from the Demon’s muddled mind. The unfortunate man recalled his last fight, the buildup to the match with The Kid. Tales of a beautiful, blonde girlfriend left behind emerged, word-crafted images of people lost. Herbert was not so interested in the Demon’s sob stories, unable to verify them, but Dan listened with sympathetic ears.

Even as the first dosage of reagent began to wear off and The Demon’s movements became stiff and lethargic, Herbert sat perched upon a wooden stool, scribbling notes and cooing in his ear. The second dose was soon to come, a slightly stronger formula Herbert was itching to try.

Every moment of the day was dedicated to The Demon, and there were times when Dan wondered if he himself was there for any reason other than to be an audience for Herbert’s twisted circus.

Preserved in his perfect post-mortem state, The Demon hung limply from the wall. He still appeared to perceive what was happening around him, but he could not move or react until given a second dosage. Herbert left his creature, retreating to the old settee in the living room to look over his notes.

A brief break, he insisted, after fourteen days of monitoring the beast.

Dan’s skin crawled as he sat across from his partner. A clock ticked monotonously in the corner. They had exchanged few words that afternoon, and it left his restless mind to consider something that had been growing in the pit of his stomach since The Demon sprang back to life. The green-eyed monster that was consuming Dan was the only thing that sickened him more than the way Herbert obsessively
focused upon The Demon.

And it was that monster which shoved Dan forward to straddle the stunned Dr. West, kissing him forcefully.

Herbert’s mouth dropped open in surprise, and Dan slipped his tongue past his lips. He tasted of bitter coffee, but all the same, Dan wanted to devour him, to be the only thing occupying his mind. His teeth grazed Herbert’s lower lip.

“Dan,” he said softly, a smug, self-important smile creeping across his face. “I didn’t realize you required such assistance.”

It was unfortunate how badly he did. He buried his face in the crook of Herbert’s neck and breathed him in, hands deftly undoing his tie.

It was not at all strange—particularly these days—that after the usual disrobement Dan found himself on his back looking up at Herbert on the settee. Dan had most certainly been the first person Herbert had ever coupled with in any way, and so in the dismal jungles of Peru he’d taught his partner everything he knew. It didn’t take long for Herbert to take the reins, to use all he’d learned against his teacher in the most horrifically wonderful way. Always direct and outstandingly precise, but ever withholding just enough to drive Dr. Cain mad.

Dan wanted to feel those exquisite hands, meticulous fingers that had committed heinous crimes explore his body and his alone. And when he whispered, “My Daniel,” against his lips, it was his indelible pride and confidence that made Dan harder. However undesirable these truths may once have been, he now wanted only to envelop himself in them. For what could he ever be if not his Daniel?

It’d been some time since Dan turned his back to Herbert and let him fuck him. Perhaps it was days of neglect that left him desperate to be used.

And some moments after they both came to shuddering climax and pulled themselves apart, Herbert asked, his cheeks still a faint pink, “Was this what you required, Daniel?” He traced his thumb along Dan’s jaw. “You’ve been lamentably unfocused during the past few days. I trust I’ve remedied that.”

Dan released some sardonic bark of a laugh. “Thanks, Doctor.”

--

Peeling, cracking skin. A rotting tongue and a blot of pus that used to be a nose. In the Hell of their cellar, their Demon was looking more and more demonic as the weeks progressed.

“This is your brain on drugs,” Dan thought darkly.

Herbert cleared his throat. “I said speak, please. What are you feeling? Be as specific as possible.”

Dan sat with a pencil at the ready. Around the soggy ball of flesh that was his tongue, the Demon
groaned, “I’ll see you in Hell, bastard.”

Lips pursed in a frown, Herbert turned briefly to meet Dan’s gaze, as if the mere eye contact was permission to do something unknown. Dan looked to The Demon instead, his pitiful face, his broken body. He had been something great once. Dan could even see himself in the twisted, damaged mass before him, the apple of Herbert West’s eye poisoned by his attention. The green-eyed monster padded back to its cage.

Calmly, Herbert reached for the pistol he kept for emergencies and shot his Demon thrice between the eyes.

Dan could’ve sworn he felt it, too.

“Herbert, what the fuck?” Dan shouted as the creature twitched, irreparably broken, but not dead. Never dead.

“He was uncooperative, Dan, and at any rate, he was falling to pieces,” Herbert muttered as he plucked the pencil and paper from Dan’s hands and scribbled his own notes. “Not to worry. We’ll dispose of him and find another.”

“Another? Goddammit, we can’t keep doing this!”

“We can and we will until--”

“Until what?” Dan spat, pulling the clipboard from Herbert’s hands. “Until we perfect the formula? Until we can help people? We murdered him, Herbert. The last month has been nothing but torturing him, treating him like a damn lab rat. How is that helping people?”

Dr. West, stony and unmoved by his queries, delicately retrieved his clipboard and placed it on the work table. “Dan, you know as well as I do that in matters such as these sacrifices must be made. If we do not experiment, how are we ever to succeed?”

Dan shook his head, mind swimming from lack of sleep. “No. Maybe at first we were learning from him. Now you’re just toying with him. You’re a bored cat playing with a wounded bird.” His insides chilled, he swallowed thickly and gripped the work table for support. Dan had seen horrific things over the past years as he threw himself—mind, body and soul—in with Dr. West, but something about the Demon now terrified him. In the ghastly light of the basement, even the creature’s dark hair and angular features matched Dan’s own.

It wasn’t so different from other arguments they’d had in the past, but this time, Dan couldn’t help his shaking hands, the poisonous crimson seeping into his vision.

In the end, it was the utter disregard, the sickening nonchalance with which Herbert turned away from him that pushed Dr. Cain to reach for the pistol and aim it at his partner. The click of the hammer was enough to gain his attention again. The brief flicker of shock on his face was delicious.

“If you just turn your back on this and leave to get another human being to ruin, I swear, Herbert, I’ll kill you.”

He masked his surprise quickly, replacing it with a familiar smirk as he approached Dan. “Kill me? After all we’ve accomplished?”

“I wouldn’t call any of this an accomplishment,” Dan muttered, holding the gun level at Herbert’s waist. “But you’re right. I wouldn’t kill you. You have enough of that slime rushing through your veins that you’d survive, suffering.”

“Hmm. You’ve made it inescapably clear that you disapprove of my methods, Daniel. However, if you disapproved of the work as a whole, I know you wouldn’t still be here. If you kill me, it will all be for nothing,” he said as he wrapped a hand around the barrel of the gun, pressing it against his stomach before guiding it slowly upward over his sternum to sit neatly against his own heart. “Meg, Dean Halsey, our girl we created with our own hands—reduced to mere figments that could have revolutionized life and death, halted by one Daniel Cain.”

Dan gritted his teeth, tried to pry Herbert’s hands from his psyche. “No. There’s just more pain. More torment because of your morbid curiosity. You can’t expect me to believe it’d ever be more than that.”

Herbert barked, “My morbid curiosity, as you say, has shattered our mortal limitations! To abandon it now would be nothing short of selfish.” He pulled the gun’s barrel to settle against his throat, pulse thrumming against the cold metal. “However, I trust you, Dan. This shot would kill me. Are you truly so willing to throw it all away?” He brushed calculating fingers along Dan’s jaw, his voice somehow fortified by its sudden softness. “The rest of the world is not as we are. We are extraordinary, and we can visit upon the masses something they could never comprehend achieving. Only us, Dan.”

The gun trembled against Herbert’s throat. Dan felt his mind, his heart in the chokehold of the last several years. He brought his other shaking hand to Herbert’s shoulder, pulling him closer. There was no warmth in his body, only a lifetime of fear. He pressed the gun into Dr. West’s hands.

“No. Not us, Herbert. Only you.”

Dan heard three more shots as he left the house. It would be ridiculous to think Herbert bore the brunt of any of those himself. The pistol was emptied into their Demon.

His Demon.

--

The next time Dan Cain heard about the infamous Dr. West was when a man proclaimed dead four days prior stumbled—sans jaw bone—into the Phillips household in southern Arkham. The older child, a teenage daughter, was murdered. A boy, Howard, was admittedly scarred for life.

And finally the cops had their hands on Herbert West, leaving Dan to feel inescapably hollow as he sealed his partner's fate.

--

“You were listed among the dead in the prison riot,” Dan said, mind bleary with the booze he’d consumed that evening, most of it before there was a surprise knock on the door. At first, he wasn’t entirely certain he believed the man sitting across from him was really there. He had changed little outwardly in thirteen years save for the expected signs of aging--vague creases in his face, a slightly fuller physique. But something in his eyes, his countenance assured Dan knew better than to ask what had happened in Arkham State Penitentiary.

“Hmm.” Herbert West smirked, and the familiarity of it damn near strangled Dan. “How did that make you feel?”

“Do you want me to tell you I cried for days? That I couldn’t go on?” he laughed bitterly. Herbert was unmoved. “But I can guess why you’re here,” Dan added softly.

“Why do you think it is?”

Dan sighed and idly plucked an empty tumbler from the table beside him, watching minute remnants of whiskey sluice about the bottom. “I don’t blame you for wanting revenge.”

Herbert sat up straighter in his chair, mouth pursed. “I did. In the beginning, I admit, it consumed my every thought.”

“And then…?”

“And then I realized there were more worthy causes to which I could devote my attention. The work, for example.”

Dan gaped. “You… you were working? In prison?”

He looked a little taken aback that Dan would ever ask such a preposterous question.

Dan settled back in his battered, thrifted arm chair. “Well. That’s more than I can say, I guess. I don’t practice, anymore. I’m not allowed. I may not have received the sentence you did, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t punished.” He inhaled sharply through his nose. He would never admit it, but as much as he hated what he was when he was working with Herbert, Dan hated what he became without him even more.

It was too sickening to think now of what he might’ve been if Herbert hadn’t waltzed into his life, brandishing neon syringes and body parts.

“Where do you work?” Herbert asked.

“I’m a janitor for Miskatonic Tech. People aren’t too keen on hiring anyone connected to the Massacre.”

The mention of the horrific event brought a brief flicker of a smile to Herbert’s lips.

Dan continued, “So, if you’re not here to kill me, why are you here?”

Herbert leaned forward, fingers piqued. “It appears to me that you are in need of a purpose again, Daniel.”

He couldn’t say he was surprised. Dan looked into those eyes, hazel eyes he knew far too well. He then glanced to his empty glass again, to the crumpled papers beneath. Past Due notices. He felt Herbert’s hands reaching into his skull, his throat, his chest cavity, pulling him in a direction he didn’t even dare dream about these days. Thirteen years and countless therapy sessions later, he should’ve felt like he could say no...

But what was he if he was not his Daniel?