Chapter Text
Victor thunders into his chambers, feeling a fire follow in his wake; in his cheek where Elizabeth had struck him mere moments ago; in his leg, a dull ache thudding in time with his cane— a heartbeat reminding him of what he has lost. As the step thunk step thunk of his footfalls softens under the rug, he comes to face himself in the mirror, feeling the fire catch up with him and fester in his belly.
He hooks his cane onto his arm, attempting to right himself, but beneath his starched white wedding attire, a cage of butterflies furiously berates him with shame, anger, and lust— the latter of which begets more of the primary feelings.
Attempting to righten himself, he avoids looking at the flush of his smarting cheek, finally cooling from the pain. Feeling a breeze, Victor looks to see his balcony door open, blinds floating like a ghost— or a veil.
The sight brings another chill over Victor, dread settling the butterflies in his stomach and killing them in a sudden cold snap. Daring to look outside, Victor allows the door to click shut behind him before turning to face where he knows his creation to be. As he stares over the inky blackness of a room he has known his whole life, anticipation drawing his back taught like a bowstring — ready to attack should he need— he implores to the stranger he created,
“Come out of the shadows, if you are here.”
A shadow removes itself from the darkness behind the fireplace, crossing to the center of the room, growing to that impossible height Victor almost forgot. Moonlight carves itself across features he can never forget— the nose, cheekbone, eye socket, brow, and chin that have burned themselves into his mind after countless hours staring at them lifeless on a table or cowering in chains.
For a moment Victor sees him as he first did, luminous with each scar Victor patched together made manifest on a living being, before his figure is again shrouded by the dark heavy clothes that cloak his fine figure. His hair complemented these layers, grown thick and curled, longer than Victor's own hair had ever been. Victor looked upon his creation, what should have been the pinnacle of his career— nay, his life— and the fire relit within him, raging through his limbs to his fingers.
“Are you here to thank me?”
The words pierce through the silence, and Victor sees another memory overlay this foreign being. He sees the fierce eyes that met his for what should have been the final time as he was condemned to a hell of Victor's own making.
“You have survived, and are intelligent enough to have found me”
Sinful pride simmers under the swirl of red hot emotions. He knew he had not made a mistake in his construction. Each muscle tendon ligament and bone had been carefully placed. He knew that his creation could not have been animated wholly lacking that spark Victor sought to implant in his head.
“I made you well”
The creature, for his part, silently stares as his creator belittles him, and does not acknowledge the remarks.
“I need you to create a companion for me. One like me”
The grunted words take Victor a moment to comprehend
“A com- a companion?”
Victor's eyebrows raise as he realizes what is being asked of him. Mind racing, he tries to process what fulfilling this infeasible request would mean. The act of creation— the week he made chaos bend to his will aligning into order— had nearly killed Victor. He would gladly have William ship him off to the sanitarium than consider repeating the process of creation.
Not to mention his funding had- ahem- been dropped. Surprisingly light footsteps snap Victor from that particularly gory memory.
“Oh”
The dismissal floats out of him as he lurches towards his creation, the click step of his heeled shoe followed by sharp metallic tap of his stride piercing the silence and drowning the soft footsteps now to his right.
“I see”
Pale skin shines in the moonlight, sickly and sallow. In some regions it nearly glows a soft pewter. Victor intimately knows the deathly pallor of a cadaver's skin; he had grown accustomed to the waxy cold texture under his gloved hand as he butchered, reformulated, and mended. He also knows the bright flush of living skin and the warm glow of blood pumping beneath the thinnest layers of the epidermis, ready to spill in scarlet cascades gushing in time with a beating heart.
The creature's face resembles neither of these as he stands backlit by the fireplace, his face a polychromatic array of argentine and sanguine in the moonlight. He looks cold, yet not waxy. Anyone could see that he does not possess the still pallor of death, as the thin scars across his face pulse with blood, which Victor can only see as he draws near enough to touch. He does not break his stride as he tears his gaze forward, gaining some distance from the creature as he nears the bed.
“Another monster.”
Another being so thoroughly entrenched in the space between life and death that Victor had occupied since his mother had left him.
“We can be monsters together.”
At this Victor nearly does break stride, instead throwing a glance to see whether the creature looks as naive as his tone implies. Indeed, his eyes speak of hope in futures planned only in the mind's eye. Victor has to turn away again at the thought of him being the one to dim that light. Victor knows firsthand that the world is hardly habitable for monsters. He also knows this task to be impossible, if only for the fact that his lab no longer exists.
Still, something stirs within him at the wide-eyed sentiment. He thinks of the last time he saw that light in his creation’s eyes, when he parroted Victor's name to him that first time. When it was the most beautiful sounds he had ever heard— the name he despised for so long polished into rubies and sapphires by his life made new. His leg pulses to remind him of why he no longer holds those precious moments dear. He puts his neck tie onto the bed.
“I have found sanity at such a cost.”
He turns his shoulders to see his creature, now bathed in the warm light of the hearth instead of celeste's harsh beams. The skin Victor knows so intimately, the bones and muscle he hand plucked from the grave, granted a modicum of vivacity by the flickering light. He wonders if the warmth of the fire would make him flush, and how far that flush would extend—would it be broken by the harsh scars?
“And you here,”
His gaze flicks down. Broad shoulders made broader by whatever combination of wild furs and a threadbare jacket lying across them. The simple clothes of a farmhand peek through the jackets opening, shrouding the marble toned muscles Victor knows lie beneath. The pinnacle of his life stands as an inky stain painted across the marble of the estate.
“Are madness calling me back.”
He tears his gaze back to the bedsheets, to the overcoat his brother has requested he wear for the wedding.
“I cannot die!”
Anguish pierces the silence, ripping Victor from his attempt at avoidance. Life eternal had been Victor’s goal, yet when faced with the consequences of it becoming reality he finds himself at a loss.
“and I cannot live,”
Victor hears the floorboards creak under the weight of a too-tall frame shifting back and forth.
“alone.”
Victor's mind races as he considers what that confession means for him. Would that he were in confession, the lord must be merciful if he would forgive him for all his wrongdoings. And yet here he finds himself faced with the culmination of all his choices and ambitions standing behind him, begging him to do the impossible. A confession of his own slips out of his lips unbidden.
“In you I have created something truly horrible”
“Not something.” His creature interjects, “Someone. You made someone”
A fact Victor recognizes all too well. He hastily shoves his arms into the sleeves of his coat in an attempt to put some distance between himself and the creature— the man —behind him, only for that distance to dissolve as hulking steps draw closer, stopping at Victor's side. A towering figure looms in his peripheries, oddly cool breath puffing above Victor's head.
He had favored tall and statuesque bodies when choosing the elements that now compose the man standing next to him, a choice that now haunts him as he turns his gaze to meet a familiar sternum.
A memory flashes through his mind, cloaked in the warm sun of a newborn spring day. Of the body next to him, now clothed in unfamiliar unflattering garments, standing next to him for the first time. Victor remembers listening to his heart beat its first stumbling thumps, and remembers being enveloped in strong arms, cradling him to his chest. It was the last time Victor had felt the warmth of a kind embrace. His cheek begins to throb where Elizabeth had slapped him what felt like years ago now.
Death has always been the center of victor's thoughts, his life, and his pursuits. To defeat death and defeat his father and prove himself worthy of his triumphant name has always been his outward goal, was what he told himself was his utmost conclusion. Yet, another niggling feeling drove him throughout his life, beginning when his mother died. That was the last time he knew true companionship, and part of him always sought to find it again. Where the comfort of others had always eluded him— women finding him brash and off putting and men always succumbing to jealousy or revulsion at his academic pursuits— he never could stamp that glowing ember out that called to be loved and held. It was this ember that pushed him to not just to bring others back from the dead, but to create life anew. If the world would not provide him a companion that could stand his company, he would craft one of his own.
With time, distance, and sleep Victor could acknowledge that his attempts to care for his creation had been unsatisfactory to say the least. The brief moments they shared between animation and Victor's dreadful decision to destroy all that mattered to him are hazy in Victor's mind, muddled by too many sleepless nights and too few conversations to mark the passage of time. He remembers his frustration; speech eluded the creature, and Victor had convinced himself that the companion he sought to make was already lost to him.
He had devoted his whole life to creating a new being, one that could finally understand him, and his sleep-addled brain convinced him that the time spent constructing the body, and indeed even the years of research, should have contributed to the new being's intelligence. He remembers feeling as though he had passed the finish line in creating, only to hear the starting gun sound for a new race he was unaware he had signed up for. He was foolish to think he could manage the creature on his own.
As time slipped by he had grown more and more incoherent, losing more patience and gaining resentment towards the being in his perfect companion’s body. He had convinced himself that this being had robbed him of his once chance at connection. Yet as the memories faded away Victor once again finds himself facing his salvation and his damnation— so achingly familiar, yet not the creature he remembers. His heart stirs at the thought. His hidden desires rise up, the butterflies beneath his sternum fluttering to life yet again.
While Victor fell prey to nostalgia the other man had come to rest at his right.
“Whatever puzzle I am, creator, I think. I feel.”
The words echo in Victor's head, processed by unhearing ears connected to a mind still tethered to a twice-abandoned water mill. The breath behind the words ghosts across his face, the same cheek made hot by Elizabeth’s touch now made cold under his creation’s breath as he spits the words at Victor. It is a reminder that the figure speaking is not wholly man. Then, Victor was never a whole man to begin with, not since he took up his oath so long ago, when part of him sunk into the ground forever.
He cannot help the surge of disgust that runs through him; disgust at his former self, who deigned to put him in this position. Who proved so inept at beholding the very fruit of his life’s work, who failed to see what could have been—what now stands, towering, to his right.
He sees a brief flash of an alternate path, a path where he had more patience and grace than God ever bestowed upon him. He sees his creation still standing at his right, but dressed in a fine waistcoat— accenting his statuesque frame and highlighting the patchwork physique Victor hand crafted for him. He sees them taking the world by storm, throwing every vitriolic word his superiors had ever cast at him back in their powdered wigs. He sees himself finally, truly, committing himself to something- someone- other than death.
All too quickly the vision fades and disgust, regret, and shame jolts victor back into his bedroom. How could he have let such a future fall to dust? He stands here now a failure of a man, with nothing to show for his cockily ruined reputation other than a metal leg, and his only hope for understanding hating his very existence.
“I have this sole petition, make one like me.”
Each word hammers itself against Victor's skull and reverberates like the ringing of an alarum bell. Victor stands to attention, pressing the imposing figure begging for Victor's action,
“And then what?”
He knows the question to be futile before it falls from his lips; there is no more lab, no funding, no bodies, and no drive in Victor to ever attempt to repeat what he considers his worst folly. Yet, his mind has never been able to stay where he wishes and it quickly conjures glimpses of a woman, skin pale, sallow, and threaded with scars.
“Procreation?”
He feels the phantom press of unanimated curves against his gloved hands as he envisions forming a companion for one which should be his.
“Reproduction?”
He raises his eyebrows holding the creature's gaze as an unbidden spike of jealousy shoots through him at the improbable future his mind has conjured. Yes, he knows what is being asked of him, after all it is foolish to assume that some of Victor's more unfortunate flaws would fall to this being. It is clear he is cursed with Victor’s incessant yearning for more. He hums as he ponders this. Would his Adonis have his bride fashioned to his requests, or would Victor create uninhibited?
The flashes of dainty disembodied limbs ribboned with scars in Victor's mind suddenly become wrapped in red gauze as his mind latches onto an image. He sees swirls of red on white, the same as the marble hidden behind the shadows flanking the mass of man towering over him. He thinks of his youth, that abominable yearning showing even then.
“A home?”
The full visage of his creature’s companion appears in his mind's eye, her face turns to him and he sees the delicate brow and upturned nose of his mother, face blue in her marble coffin.
“A grave?”
In his memory he places a marble cameo over her face, sealing her away, forever.
“Death begetting death, begetting death.”
He sees his father’s coffin following his mother. He thinks he sees his own waiting for him.
A chill descends over him and he pushes the mass of muscle aside in seek of warmth from the hearth. His creature allows himself to be moved aside with grace, and it does not escape Victor's notice that he would not have been able to pass without the creature’s cooperation. The heat of the hearth warms his skin, but it does not warm the chill of horror in his core.
“A race of devils propagated across the earth. Obscenity perpetuating itself!”
How apt that that should be Victor's legacy. He turns to face his legacy made flesh, only a wedge of his silver skin visible as he glances at Victor over his right shoulder.
“I am obscene to you,” he turns to his left, “but to myself I simply am.”
His words turn heated at the end, crescendoing as his footfalls join the roar as he steps towards Victor.
The words ring achingly familiar to the thoughts and prayers Victor once uttered while his father yet lived— when he was hated for his very nature. A cocktail of feelings wells within him, fear and anger making him rush at his creature like an injured mutt.
“BEGONE!”
Victor huffs a bark of aggression at him, hoping his creation still remembers how cruel he treated him and the fear it instilled.
“Never again will I make something like you—”
He walks back to the mirror again feeling that trail of fire again following him. He looks into the silver and sees a wretch, pain flaring up his leg to remind him that he did not make it through his first endeavor whole.
“—wicked and deformed.”
His eyes catch his own gaze and he considers how much has changed since he last looked at himself mere minutes ago. He shifts his cane to his other hand as his leg throbs with regret but he leans into it and welcomes the pain. It tethers him to this moment, separating him from a myriad of futures that cannot be, reminding him that he is responsible for them not coming to fruition. He rakes a hand through his hair and tugs on his lapels in a vain attempt to right himself as his creature skulks behind him, coming into view in the argentate reflection.
“Then it is still all about your will Victor”
His spine shivers as he feels a presence looming behind him, drawing ever nearer. The warmth he could feel radiating from the fire is swiftly cut off, replaced by the unearthly chill of reanimated flesh, cold enough to spark Victor's curious mind. He finds his eyes flitting to meet the pair in the mirror, one eye reflecting red in the flickering firelight.
This close he can feel the hum behind him rattle through his bones, igniting his blood as he stands straight and still. The butterflies caged within his ribs furiously beat at the bars and Victor suddenly feels his blood start to travel. He stares dead ahead in the mirror, unsure if he is terrified or titillated.
“That horrible, horrible will that birthed me condemns me now?”
The repeated words send puffs of cool air down his neck and past his ear, causing goose pimples to raise along his whole body. He again is taught as a bow string; ready, yet pinned in place by the mass of muscle keeping him by the mirror.
Suddenly the stillness of the world shatters as two strong hands envelop his shoulders to turn him away from the mirror. Victor gasps as he suddenly comes face to face with the pale visage of his creation. He feels his toes scrape the fine rug on his bedroom floor as his creature hoists him off the ground by his lapels and carries him towards the nearest wall.
“The miracle is not that I should speak, but that you should ever listen”
Victor's head slams into the wall, punctuating the roared sentiment with stars in his vision that surround the creature as he pins Victor to the wall in threat. The heady rush of what is likely a concussion makes Victor feel intoxicated and light, a stark juxtaposition to his current situation.
His creature pants over him in rage, seeming to decide whether to end Victor there or to run back to whence he came to regather himself. Still floating on the wall, toes barely scraping the floor boards as the creature holds him aloft, Victor feels another flash of heat as he sees the gears turning in his creations head; intelligent thought playing out behind those mismatched eyes.
More blood leaves his already addled brain and Victor realized he will not be able to hide the natural conclusion to such volume of blood vacating his head, as the steel grip pinning him to the wall has him laid bare with no plan of recourse. His head swims as he sends up a wordless prayer to a guardian angel he knows has abandoned him, eyes casting heavenward, as the mismatched eyes searching for reason turn towards Victor's damnation.
A startled noise rumbles through the air, vibrations traveling through the arms holding him to the wall, and through every nerve in Victor’s body as the creature notices the protrusion in his trousers.
“You call me a devil—”
The creature finally speaks, eyes still cast hell-ward. Victor wonders if the devil had indeed animated the body he created to send Victor temptations he could not deny.
“—yet it seems to me I should be a saint.”
With this, his eyes flick to meet Victor’s. His left eye burns a flash of red, inhuman and incandescent, and Victor’s sluggish mind fights to understand this poetry from one he only considered a lame failure until mere moments ago. It was now Victor's turn to grunt confused noises at his creation, unable to form words.
“My first miracle is in my creation, a Lazarus of your own making. My second, by your merit, is that I should be here to speak to you at all. My third, as I see it, is that I have found a way to make you listen.”
With this he draws closer, pulling Victor fully off the ground by his wrists to meet his eyeline and crowding in, aligning their bodies but separating them by inches— centimeters maybe. Their only point of contact, the cold shackle of a grip on Victor's wrists burns hot with pain from the sudden force in a mix of sensations that sings through to his extremities. Victor has never felt such fear, such anticipation, as in this moment.
He feels puffs of cold breath across his face as he realizes that his creature has stopped speaking. His brain sputters to life as he manages to stumble out,
“And- and how will you do that?”
His vision is obstructed with thick curls that smelt of damp rain, mildew, and a herbaceous smell that seemed at odds with the more environmental ones. Dry, scarred lips brush against his ear, like ice against the sensitive skin.
“By giving you what you truly want.”
With those words Victor feels the bowstring of his spine be plucked, reverberating down his limbs and back up to slam into his head as he gasps and squirms in a futile attempt to— Victor’s not quite sure what, but he knows he must rend the languor from the air between them.
The air does move, filling with chilled air as the body holding him aloft pulls away.
“Tsk tsk tsk,” his creature scolds him, “Ah, not yet, creator. Not until I earn my final miracle. Patience, as you should know, is a virtue. But then it seems you never quite got a grasp of the holy virtues as much as you did the deadly sins.”
The hand gripping his wrists tightens impossibly as the hulking frame gracefully invades his space again to grab him by the chin, forcing them to lock eyes, souls bared to each other.
“If you refuse to make me a companion. You will be my companion.”
The words ring out, rumbling through the room like thunder in the ursine bass of the creature's voice.
“You may be my creator, but from this day forward, I will be your master”
Victor, arms going numb, jaw prickling with the pressure of his creature’s grip can only nod and hope his eyes convey the conflicted rush of emotions clouding his head. How can he refuse, when he is being held such as he is; when his impossible dreams are offered to him, skewed and warped in the most beautifully twisted manner?
“Speak”
The grip on his jaw lessens slightly as a silvery face nears his. Victor can see the dark red blood pumping in the veins within the scars of his face; he can see proof that he is not a failure, proof that his life was not all for naught, proof that he could be worthy of his name. He lolls his tongue about his mouth trying to summon anything resembling the English language, but coming up short.
“Speak, creator.”
The hand on his chin shifts ever so slightly, pressing cool fingertips gently against his throat. Skimming the surface of his neck over the high uncomfortable collar of his wedding attire. They come to rest nearly surrounding the column of his throat, enveloping his burning hot pulse points in a chilled blanket that quickly begins to heat under the rabbit-like thrum of Victor's heart.
“Y- ahem. Yes. I agree to your conditions”
Victor stumbles the words out as quickly as his lethargic tongue can form them, cheeks burning as he hears them resound about the room. His eyes dart about as he tries to staunch the embarrassment rising in him.
“Not the phrase I’m looking for. “
The now-warm fingers around his neck twitch to life, squeezing slightly. Victor's eyes fly back to meet the mismatched eyes still holding his gaze. He stares past them into the soul of this being he hand sculpted. This body he knows better than he knows his own, yet within resides a soul so unfamiliar that it terrifies Victor as much as it intrigues him.
He has only ever felt this unique set of feelings a scant few times in his life; most recently with Elizabeth— the traces of her last touch now erased by the creature's grip— and primarily surrounding his fascination with death. Unable to resist the urge to chase that feeling which had motivated him for so long— the feeling that recently left him impuissant— the words fall out of his oxygen-starved mouth
“Yes, master.”