Chapter Text
What comes after the end of the world and one’s life within it?
Victor drifts along the edges of such a question’s precipice, surprised and dismayed by his own willingness to find out. What has become of him, that he would go without fuss into the damnation that's surely awaiting him? Still, how can he be anything but contented by the thought of sweet oblivion when his creature’s tears are still wet upon his skin at being forever denied the answer?
He can feel those tears renew at times, holy water stinging wrung out skin, hands gentling him when his body recoils from death’s fingertips instinctively. How ironic, that the thing–the someone–he stole and built from death itself is now the being he slants towards to protect him from the only horizon he has left to discover.
Choose me, Creator. It’s a plea, rather than a command, but it holds no less compulsion over his soul. I will not leave you bereft. We can begin anew if you’ll only stay.
It is the same damnable, naive promise he had made before his dark angel, and a part of him longs to put an end to such tenderness before it peels back skin and sinew to expose the decay of him beneath.
His confession, the Creature’s forgiveness, it is all nothing if he opens his eyes and emerges back into a world where his madness remains. His creation stands the best chance of humanity without Victor to show him what monsters and devils do, and yet…and yet…
Selfishness and an uncontrite heart are what his father bequeathed him when Victor attempted to withstand what no offspring should ever have to endure from their protector. Now, he wonders if his not-child–his beautifully hideous mistake and greatest triumph–might be built to endure him nonetheless.
I cannot die, and I cannot live alone.
It is the matter of a decision made within seconds, and then endless weeks of his broken form contorting to that horrible, horrible will of his before his breath finally stops rattling in his chest and begins to even out.
He doesn’t know what he screams and cries while the fever ravages what’s left of his passion, his rage, his pride, but every lucid moment between is spent looking into eyes that hold no further judgement for him, and a cool embrace that acts as an anchor when he is unmoored. He clings and he shivers, but he is not left to shake apart.
Arms he crafted from ruin are there to still him. To bathe and clothe him, to feed him and clean the sick from his mouth when he can keep nothing down. Not once is he struck or scolded or told to stand, Victor. Frailty is of no use to your patients or to me. Get up.
Always, he is tended to with a gentleness that could almost make him believe there was never any violence between them at all. Almost, if not for the guilt that roils in his gut each time the Creature whispers to him in the night, keeping the hair from his eyes while he howls his agony and begs for a death he’s already rejected. It seems like it will never end, but it does, as all things do.
His fever breaks, and with it, his will to do anything but turn into those arms. He can do nothing but lay his chest against a sluggish, relentless heartbeat as he had that first morning before he came undone. He aches to hear his name again. To be granted it anew now that he is to keep living with its burden on his shoulders, but he bites his tongue and swallows what blood wells forth.
It is not his to ask for, anymore.
—
They leave the Horisont together, when the ship finally makes its way to port, with both fear and gratitude extended to his Creature from the crew that has been torn asunder and brought home by his hands. Victor thinks that perhaps he had it wrong the entire time.
He has already accepted–too late, far too late–that he is the monster, as Elizabeth and William and every voice that ever mattered has accused. But this is something more. Perhaps he has birthed a god or a titan or an angel instead. Humanity in reverse to witness the sublime. Not purer as Elizabeth had suggested, but simply more. More wrath, more love, more peace and violence than Man can beget, perpetuated into eternity.
If we are to behave as immodestly as gods…
“Where is it that we will go from here?” The Creature’s voice is quiet. Subdued and respectful, speaking to Captain Anderson, who smiles and squeezes his arm. Victor’s jaw twitches, but he has played the Baron long enough to keep the ire from his countenance when he answers, rather than the Captain.
“Not back on the ship, if that's what you're thinking. We are not so far from the means to go to Geneva. The Estate will do for now, until arrangements can be made to sell it. I have no desire to…” He trails off, frowning.
Will William’s body still be there, cold and decaying? Surely he has been buried, but the fact that he does not know for certain weighs heavy.
He sees the moment the same question dawns with another name upon the Creature’s mind.
They stare at each other, tension choking at Victor. He waits for long fingers to mirror that breathlessness. It’s not my fault, he wants to scream, but that’s the kind of lie that dooms a journey such as this. One he has fought tooth and nail from the grave to undertake.
They don’t speak of it, but the Creature nods, turning back to the Captain.
“Your kindness will not. Be f-forgotten,” he says, inclining his head, the cataract of one eye glinting in the morning light. He turns to what little luggage they carry with them, slinging Victor’s bags over his shoulders and taking his gun onto his back as though it hadn’t been the source of more pain than Victor will ever be able to comprehend. The Captain swallows hard, but not in fear, no. It seems that he has taken the entirety of their tale in its completeness and weighed their hearts against whatever feather his wide travels and all he has seen has borne.
It is clear he knows whose will be devoured by jackals.
“Take care of him,” he says gruffly, staring Victor down with all the authority of a fellow madman who has seen the glimmer of reason at last.
He opens his mouth. To accept the command? To deny it? To say that he does not know how? To confess that he intends to do whatever he must to–
“I will.” Snaps his mouth shut again, a grim line he finds mirrored on the Captain’s face. It was not Victor who answered. “I will not leave him, f-for he did not abandon me.”
Victor scoffs at such a blatant lie in front of the one other man in the entire world who can possibly understand how deeply untrue that statement is, but the Creature only glances at him before turning back to his task.
“Are you to play pack mule then?” He asks despite the frown of disapproval from the Captain. He can be nothing but what he is. “I could–”
A bag is held out to him. One of the smaller ones, and that makes him bristle, but the look on the Creature’s face does not suggest he has room for argument just yet. He moves to take it, jaw clenched against unwise words, reaching first with the ruin of his right hand. He stares when his creation subtly pulls it away to make up for his mistake, delivering it to his left. Something crawls into his throat, heavy and cloying. He shifts the rucksack uncomfortably to avoid his damned leg as he tries not to contemplate what just happened, the state that he’s currently in, or in what company.
“Best of luck, lads,” is the parting they are granted after the Creature and the Captain exchange a few more quiet words. As they move into the frozen landscape awaiting them, the weight of the bag is not the sole burden that Victor feels upon his shoulders.
—
They do not speak, but the wind does.
It howls and curses and cries around them, and Victor hears accusations in each shriek of its fury. He has never been one for such faerie nonsense, but the near silent footsteps from the beast of a man in front of him are enough to make anyone wonder.
At some point, between the sun’s setting and the frigid, furtive drop in temperature, he realizes that the Creature has slowed his unforgiving pace to walk directly in front of Victor, shielding him from the worst of the cold.
His furs are dusted with snow, hood up, and he turns to check on Victor’s place behind him every so often. Each time, his shoulders ease a little, as though he is surprised that Victor is not already miles away in another direction entirely.
As if he has anywhere else to go.
He cannot fulfill his new purpose anywhere but here.
The exhaustion takes him first, just before the ache in his leg becomes nigh on unbearable. Are they even going in the right direction? He hadn’t thought to ask, too wrapped up in his thoughts as he had been.
He stumbles, catching himself on the Creature’s coat, and he freezes for reasons unrelated to the storm when the other turns, arm raised. He squeezes his eyes shut, thinking he’s about to be struck into the snow, but instead, the pack is lifted from his shoulder. He is suddenly engulfed in fur as the Creature silently wraps him up against his body. It is barely any warmer with the Creature’s skin being like a block of ice, but the wind is not in his face, and the snow on his beard melts with his breath against the sturdy surface of the Creature’s chest.
“I will carry you.”
He grimaces, the idea of it anathema to him. He did not traipse through the wilderness to be told he is unfit to continue on. To be carried like a babe by his…by…
“There is still a way to go before we will reach a place to rest. You are in pain. Do not be foolish.”
No amount of tiredness or hurt will keep him from eviscerating any who think him weak, and he looks up with all the force of the steel rods he’d once used against this being who didn’t deserve it then any more then than he did now.
Except…
“Please, Victor.”
Please.
Please always helps. He recalls distantly, and nearly breaks down into hysterical, humourless laughter.
Of course he wouldn’t have to beg for his name, even when he has not granted his creation the dignity of one. Of course it would be given as a bribe for his compliance because he is a thrice cursed wretch that can’t even follow his own decisions when he–
“Alright, fine. Fine. Let’s get this over with,” he mutters, scowling when the Creature makes a relieved sound and immediately draws away. He sways, and a voice at the back of his mind warns that he is barely past his last bout of illness. Death looms, thwarted once already, eager for another chance to claim him if he is not brought indoors soon.
The Creature sheds his outer coats, keeping a hold of them and lowering himself, offering his back. It’s…at least slightly more dignified than he’d assumed, and so he climbs and lays his cheek against the soft slope of the other’s shoulder. He is enveloped once more in the coat, laid over him as the Creature stands, tying it off to help aid Victor in staying up.
It is as if he weighs nothing at all when the Creature begins his trudge anew, burdened at the front by their supplies and the back by Victor.
At some point, the exhaustion must take him entirely, because he drifts in and out, cold and uncertain of their survival until suddenly he realizes there is no snow to be seen and he's–
He is…in a bed? Atop a mattress, at the very least, blankets heaped over him. He blearily moves his hand across its expanse until it encounters the edge before opening his eyes to search for his…
Oh.
The Creature is sitting before the fire he’s stoked, looking into the flames with complete, unnatural stillness. A book sits in his lap, forgotten, and Victor feels the breath leave him when his creation seems to realize he is being stared at and turns his head, fresh tear tracks cascading down his cheeks. He does not wipe them away; they are simply a fact to him.
Victor doesn’t know what possesses him in that moment, only that he cannot stand to see those eyes taking him in from a world beyond. A place where he can do nothing about the pain in them.
He reaches, and the Creature–his Creature–who has carried him from death and destruction and despair, comes to him despite everything. Haltingly, uncertainly, but he plants a knee on the bed, awaiting whatever Victor has to say.
“I do not know where we are,” he whispers, throat rasping with an ache that seems will never leave him.
“But I do,” the Creature replies, and he nods. That is enough. “We are safe here.”
“Then come and rest,” he says, far less of a demand than he wishes it could be. Still, if it means the Creature will do as he asks, he’s not above a bit of wheedling.
“Beside you?”
“Yes. Where else?” Anywhere. Anywhere else is available to his Creature now that the close quarters of the ship and the need for constant vigilance has passed. With how little sleep Victor recalls he requires, he could be far beyond his reach in a matter of hours. But anywhere else is not where he is, and he loathes the thought.
The Creature’s eyes remain on his face for a long while, testing whether or not Victor’s patience will hold, and Victor lays himself back, keeping their gazes locked. Perhaps the fever has returned, with how overheated he is. His leg aches, and when he reaches down to free himself of his prosthetic, he finds it already missing.
A quick, half-panicked glance to the side reveals it is within his reach, leaning against a crude bedside table.
“It appeared. To pain you f-further when you would mmove in your sleep,” the Creature explains, seeming to read his mind. Or perhaps simply following his line of sight. “I would give you relief, if you would…permit me.”
His heart catches in his throat. Further and further into debt he goes, but what does it matter? Now that he has his wits back, however sparse they remain…
“Did I not say that it was permissible, on the ship?”
The Creature inclines his head in acknowledgement. “You did. But we are not aboard the ship and you are not in immediate danger any longer. I will ask anew f-for the ground you were forced to concede. I would not have resentment. Fester beneath assumptions when we have finally managed to hear each other.”
Ask anew…he is being given back his life completely, isn’t he? Piece by piece. Being asked to make different choices with it in that strange, halting way the Creature speaks when he’s neither angry nor righteous.
“Any ground I gave, however reluctantly, I gave in its entirety. It is yours to keep.” I am yours to keep. A poor excuse for a companion, but you wanted a fellow monster, after all.
Such an expression upon his creation’s face…
He is moved, Victor suddenly realizes. As I was moved when he looked into the deep void of eternity and saw only his own lingering.
“You came back f-for me and were punished for it,” he continues, taking up the stump in his hands. Victor doesn’t bother speaking the permission he doesn’t need to grant. Everything of him is his Creature’s, now. From this day forward, I will be your master. He has already made good on his promises to make him bloody and humble. Victor will live whatever days he has left as a devotee of a greater will than his own. A less terrible one, he understands now. The hands he made are more capable than his own to carry them both through whatever is to come.
“I lost it because I left you for dead and lit the tower ablaze,” Victor says incredulously. Angrily, though the rage is directed inward. “Everything in the hell we are confined to together is of my making. Have we not already understood this?”
The Creature tilts his head, lowering his eyes.
“Is it hell we are in, even now? I was. Thinking that this was…mmmore of a. Second chance at Eden.”
His tongue feels thick and heavy in his mouth.
“Funny place for a garden,” he scorns, but there’s hardly any heat in it, even as he gestures around them. “A rundown little shack in the middle of the–”
His eyes catch the bookshelf near a broken chair by the window. Looks towards the forgotten title on the floor near the fireplace.
Paradise Lost.
He swallows deeply, horrified. Wishes to cut his tongue out and throw it beyond reach.
He knows exactly where they are now. How the Creature knew to come here, and why there would be no one inhabiting it.
The sudden urge to flee is immense. A yawning chasm as his eyes take in everything he can manage to see in the low light. Recognizes the moment the Creature realizes he knows what this place is, his shoulders raised in fear of whatever judgement Victor might pass.
What had it cost to bring him here? Surely this is why there had been tears as the Creature stared into the flames. What had he been thinking, bringing Victor to this…
A home? A grave?
They sit in silence for a long while, the Creature’s hands eventually working into the flesh of his leg again. He takes the phantom pains with him as easily as he bears the cruelty Victor heaps upon him without thinking.
The nerves have grown blessedly dull from stimulation by the time his creation stands, moving back to the book to put it away and bank the fire. Victor wonders if he will leave now that he has insulted every possible gift he has been given all over again.
He’s been brought into his Creature’s garden. The place he became himself with the help of someone far more equipped to bring out the goodness in him. The place he’d been cast from through no fault of his own, and Victor desperately wants to know if he thinks of the wolves tearing his friend apart as some sort of retribution for imagined sin.
What justifications does his Creature repeat in his mind when he thinks of such senseless loss?
Instead, he feels the bed creak with another’s weight. The Creature lays beside him as he’s been doing for the months aboard the Horisont. He waits for the span of a breath. A second. A third, before he turns into the comfort of a heartbeat he sparked into existence.
Arms enfold him again, and he wishes he had any apology left in him to give.
“It will not be rundown for long.” A promise in the dark, soothing and hopeful and slowly pieced together. “I will. Make it beautiful, as I did before. We will winter here, and when the thaw comes, we can. Make our way to Geneva. Or anywhere else you wish to go. F-for now, I would like to tend to this place.”
To atone goes unspoken, but it rings loudly in the quiet nonetheless.
What do you have to atone for? He wants to scream. What more could you possibly do?
He fiddles with the buttons of the Creature’s shirt, patched together and gifted by the crew with attention to his large stature. Although the fear and bitterness for their lost comrades was too much to surmount for most, there had been a handful who had approached his creation when they thought Victor asleep or lost to fever.
They'd spoken now and again with him, growing bolder when they discovered his boundless curiosity. He wished for stories from their homelands. Their families. More than one night found him feigning sleep just to listen to the smile in his Creature’s voice when he asked about wives and children.
“Am I to be Eve, then?” He asks suddenly, without thinking. Ignores the sensation of heat that the question brings, pooling and churning with shame and want alike. “The companion you petitioned for?”
His Creature rumbles in contentment at the idea, even when he laughs lowly and shakes his head, surprising Victor with the sound. He’s only heard a farcical version of it once before. The beauty of its strangeness is striking.
“You are no more Eve than you are God, Creator. And I am no Adam, for I am alone even when I am in the presence of the world. No God shelters me in death, no Hell accepts my penance. No Christ dies to make me clean. The knowledge I gained was not from wanting what I could not have, poisoned with the sweetness of fruit. It was given freely. Unrelentingly. Handed to me or beaten into me, but it is mine.”
He flinches, but the Creature does not let him move away, steady in voice and action. He is stroked and soothed like a skittish beast, and he is awful enough to encourage it. Can feel himself thawing into something malleable. Easier for petting. For keeping. Has he always wanted to be kept? He had wished before to be a butterfly or beetle in her collection, tearing his wings fighting the pins he asked for, but he’s not certain if it goes back any farther. Perhaps it will change with the harsh realities of morning light, but right now, he can admit that the thought has been tempting for a long while. He has already been more than he was meant to be; Icarus flying high, or Prometheus with his torch. Perhaps that is what everyone with ambitions beyond themselves have in common.
A penchant for burning themselves. Fire, ice, it feels just the same.
Why not enjoy the sun from where he’s at, for once? Neither closer nor further from it. Why not? He won’t know until it rises again to answer.
“Are you not in want of a name, then? A way to be known in this world that will keep you when everyone else fades?”
He is laid onto his back again, and the Creature hovers over him. Does he truly need the sun, after all, when so much is illuminated in the glint of a red eye and the warmth the other is bestowing upon him?
Hands frame his face, the light chill of them cooling his fever. Tempering him from inferno to candle.
“Who else knows me but you? I called myself Victor, not knowing the difference between what was you and what was myself. I remember you touching your chest. Touching mine. I remember calling myself by what was yours, for I was yours, and you were everything. And you affirmed it, that first day. Affirmed it again when it was mine to return to you as we sat locked in ice and our own thinning malice. Perhaps I longed for a different name, once, but that longing faded when the old man called me friend, and I could be that. When others called me demon, inhuman, monster, and I could protect myself as they expected me to. When you called for Maman, and I could answer.”
Victor can hardly breathe.
“You cried out for the names of ghosts I have not met and ones that I have. None of them could reach you, but I could. Nameless and yours alone. I would keep it that way until you are gone from this world. Perhaps, then, I will reclaim the name you bestowed me and carry you with me into deathless eternity, but not now. I would rather be what you need me to be, moment to moment.”
“That is…” He clears his throat, pushing his face deeper into the Creature’s chest. “That is far more than I deserve. You are more than that. More than I am.”
“‘I am that I am,’” he quotes, laughing quietly, shaking his head. When had his creation developed such marvelous, irreverent humour? “And yet it is what I want. You will not deny me it. I can be willful too.”
Victor can’t help but smile a little, tears escaping and smearing into the other’s skin.
“And who am I to this being? This willful Creature with many names that I will bestow him?”
His forehead is kissed, light as a butterfly, and his ruined hand is caught in a much larger one.
Same. See? The same.
“You are Victor,” he says easily, and now the tears flow freely, but he makes no move to stop them. “Time has not changed the fact that it still means everything to me.”