Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

November 16th, 12:40 AM

Here follows the account of my greatest success, or perhaps failure; that remains to be seen. Everything I know has been inverted. As yet, there is no one to whom I can confide these events, great and terrible, but I am not at peace, so I have hastily transcribed them here to clarify and pacify my mind concerning these matters.

Lightning flashed, white light illuminating my lab in harsh bright increments. On the table, my creation convulsed violently, the first sign of life! Elation coursed through me like fire! I laughed in triumph, the sound drowned out in the storm's fury. His leather restraints creaked, then snapped as the convulsions continued. A…sound issued from it's throat – I know not how to describe it, like a wail, a cry, harsh and broken. I only know that it carried the deepest sorrow I have ever heard. Even Elizabeth, my father, and little William did not weep so at the passing of my dear mother. The sound was unearthly and I shuddered, elation quenched in sudden horror. The creature slipped from the table, great limbs still twitching, like a newborn, or like a man insane. He lay on his side, those horrible sounds issuing brokenly from his throat.

The powerful hands came up to clutch its head, and the wailing changed to something that rose and fell like speech. The massive body thrashed as if in the throes of some terrible dream. The great hand jerked out pushing back an unseen threat, colliding with the metal table leg. With an awful groan the metal gave under the creature's hand, metal and man crying out together. He was, I distantly realized, horribly strong.

My foot crunched glass and I realized I had backed across my lab. Truly, it was an awful sight. The creature's skin had not warmed with life - it was a greyish, deathly pallor, his frame huge and crisscrossed with scars. His hair fell lank over his face, to his great heaving shoulders. Many of the carefully stitched seams and incisions dripped with thick dark blood. I had poured a meticulously brewed elixir into the incisions designed to stimulate the flesh to join, even before he had been given life, but the tissue still needed to grow together to form one frame and heal itself. With a start, I realized he could do himself great injury with all this thrashing and convulsing.

His wails had given way to shuddering breaths, broken by whimpers grating from his throat. Suddenly I remembered that his face and brain were those of a convict – perhaps he was haunted by the crimes of his past life. I resolved to wake him and try to comfort him. My creation could not be allowed to rip himself apart in the first hour of life; I would not so easily allow my experiment to fail.

I gingerly approached, thinking uncomfortably of his great strength. I did not know how to comfort him. My thoughts flashed to my dear Henry and his unceasing kindness to me, and I resolved to copy the methods he used to draw me out of my melancholy fits.

I knelt slowly on the floor before my creation. I refrained from touching him, wary of his earlier convulsions and struggles. I shuddered to think how my flesh would cave like the table leg under his hand.

"Whatever sorrows you dream of, know that it is only a dream. That life is past," I said, trying to sound comforting and also to make myself heard over the storm, still howling like a living thing.

The creature's shuddering breath paused. He heard me!

"You are safe here. I will - "

"NO!"

The sound was loud as thunder. His wide eyes stared into mine. The sclera were yellow, but his pupils were pale and stormy. He jerked his arm out, knocking me flat. I found myself on my back, the vaulted ceiling of my laboratory lost in darkness above me. My chest ached. What happened?

I heard shuffling sounds, and suddenly his face was above mine, impossibly concerned. Clumsy hands lifted me, and the creature held me, clutching me to his chest as if I were his only friend in the world. One great hand encircled the back of my head, fingers slipping through my hair, until his thumb came to rest against my neck, just under my jaw.

Dazed, I did not resist. My head came to rest against his collar bone – I could hear his heart, the one I had carefully chosen and sewn into him with my own hands, beating steady and strong. Something soaked into my hair, and I realized the creature was crying, his salt tears dripping into my curls. His skin under my cheek was warm – I felt the ridges of puckered skin against the thread I had pulled through his tissue. Something warm and wet leaked from it, and for an impossible moment I fancied that his scars wept too.

But I smelled blood. I was being embraced by a corpse. Horror sprang up, and I longed to struggle free from his arms, but my body was still dazed and sore. I shuddered. Waves of panic rose in me – I felt his arms like steel bands around me, I could not get enough air, the smell of blood and decay was thick in my nose, and under it a stinging Sulphur smell - the elixir. My stomach churned and clenched. I felt bile creeping up my throat.

"Calm yourself, Victor. You are a scientist, not a dreamer. You can endure."

I tried to breath deeply through my mouth and ignore the mingling stench. Desperate to think of something other than the blood leaking onto my face…and hands… I realized dimly, I focused on counting the thunder of his heart, just under my ear. He was newly born, and could be unstable physically as well as mentally.

His skin was warm under me, and his thumb pressed into my neck. His hand was so large that he cradled my whole head in it, and could easily crush it. I shivered at how vulnerable I was and panic surged through me again. Suddenly I had the notion he was checking my pulse. I couldn't shake it even though there was no way for the newly born creature to have that instinct.

I felt my breathing growing fast and shallow. My thoughts grew scattered and I could not distract myself from the horror of my creation's embrace – the smell of death, the blood under my fingers, his thumb pressing into my pulse point.

"Let me go," I said, quiet.

The great body continued to shake with sobs. He did not hear me. Reason fled. I needed out.

"Let me go!" I screamed, shoving against his heart with all my strength.

The creature startled, then went still. It was as if he had forgotten I was there, or did not expect me to move at all. Gently he pulled me back from his embrace and set me on my knees, his hands moving to my shoulders, engulfing them completely. I stared into his face, transfixed.

My creation was hideous. Lips, blackened and shriveled, a knotting scar across his cheek, dark veins visible through the grey, translucent skin – I brought a monster out of the grave. And his eyes. Watery and yellowed with death, welling with tears and staring straight through me, piercing me with their longing.

I could not move, such was the effect of my creature's visage on my overwrought mind. How had it all gone so wrong? He was supposed to be beautiful. I brought my hands up to block out the sight, but it would not leave my mind. I became aware that I was speaking – crying out.

"Demon! Devil! Get away!"

Suddenly I felt his hands, huge and gnarled, take mine. Fear stiffened me. I waited for pain – for what else could come from such a being? But my hand was simply drawn away from my face, and held, with an almost reverent gentleness.

The creature was making sounds again, the same two, over and over. These were not uttered with pain and fear, but with a questioning air. The sounds were thick and sluggish. It seemed my creation was laboring to work his tongue. I distantly recalled that I had cut out the convict's tongue and stitched in a lawyer's tongue in my quest for perfection. A giggle escaped my lips. It all seemed ridiculous now that I faced a monster.

The sounds kept falling from his blackened lips: "Vih…." "tur…"

Could it be… could that creature be calling my name? I opened my eyes, shocked, only to be met with his nightmarish face.

And his hands still clamped my shoulders. Why would he not let me go? My fear turned to anger – anger that failure had stolen my dream.

"Let me stand, damn you!"

I struggled to rise, but those huge hands kept me rooted to the floor. It was no great exertion for him.

"I am your creator, wretch! I said, let me go!" I cried, hating him with my whole being.

I clawed at his arms and writhed in his grip, my foot connecting with his stomach. He grunted in pain, and his eyebrows lowered. Haltingly, he pulled me close, inevitable, no matter how I struggled to push him away. A gnarled arm wrapped across my back - his heavy hand descended on my head – unendurable!

"You – hideous failure!" I roared, throat aching.

I heaved for breath. A shudder passed through him, but he did not loosen his hold.

"You'll get nothing from me!" My voice broke.

His fingers began to move in my hair. His touch repulsed me.

"Go to hell!"

I slammed my fists against his unyielding flesh. Though the impact cruelly jarred my arms, his remained closed fast about me.

I panted, strength fading.

"Leave me," I hissed, slumping.

Still he held me, impossibly gentle. My breaths shuddered; I began to sob. My anger left me, leaving me powerless and ashamed in his grasp.

"No." I felt his ribcage vibrate with the word.

"…What?"

Willlln-not. Leave," he said, slow and thick.

Implacably, he stared at me, the same implacable compassion that so often animated the face of my dear Clerval. How this filled me with horror, and with shame; the face of a man, staring at me with the kind of tenderness I had rarely ever witnessed, perhaps only in the eyes of my beloved Elizabeth or my dearest friend.

Those eyes I knew what I had done – I felt sure of it.

He stared straight into my face with love.

Slowly he brought his hand towards me, thumb brushing my cheek, brushing away the wetness. I endeavored to master my tears, but they kept falling. My heart was overburdened – anger, shame, regret, compassion, for this creature whose heart was far larger than my own.

I brought my hand to his cheek, mirroring the gesture. How small and pale my hand looked against his face, rough and scarred like a mountain. But no, he was living flesh under my fingers. I had done it – created life, and yet, keen as a dagger in my heart, I knew that he was more alive – more worthy of life – than his creator.

The storm waned around us, thunder giving way to a steady rain. My tears cleansed me, but left me empty, and a fog of exhaustion engulfed me. I did not sleep, but my mind churned fragmented thoughts, unheeding of what was before my eyes.

A bought of coughing shook me out of my lethargy. I became aware that we were still kneeling together, his hands bracing my shoulders. My knees ached and I was chilled and damp. I knew I had to move, but I was so tired. My creation startled at my coughs. He too had been lost in exhaustion. A faint sound of pain issued from his lips.

I needed to make sure he was stable – do something about the blood. He needed more of that elixir to finish sealing his seams. I looked to my operation table where he had lain for many months, but it seemed cruel. He was no longer a lump of flesh to be prodded about. My bed. I would take him up to my living quarters and look him over there.

I rocked back on my heels and gained my feet with embarrassing exertion. Extending a hand to him, I asked, "Can you stand?"

Moving would be an arduous process – his movements were coltish and jerky.

His eyes followed me as I rose, and he nodded. He stood slowly, stumbling once he reached his full height. I darted under his arm and he fell against me, making us both stagger. Stumbling and shambling we progressed down the stairs to the living space under my laboratory. He towered over me, and I wondered at myself for making him so large. With each movement I could hear his flesh settling against itself with a faint squelch. I shivered and tried only to think of the next step. He needed rest, a thorough examination, and food. And then perhaps a bath.

We reached the top of the stairs, and pushing the door open, we stumbled sweating over the threshold. Sunlight fell across my wretchedly disheveled apartment – clothes, books, and a few dishes littered every surface and crowded the floor. Embarrassed, I glanced up at my creation, but he did not take in his surroundings, head drooping. He breathed heavily and his mouth was drawn with lines of pain.

I half-feared my strength or his would give out before we reached the bedroom, cramped and vacant. But there was the door. I began settling him into my bed, childishly small for his frame. Daylight streamed in, illuminating my dusty and unused bedclothes, now stained with blood. He was naked, I realized with shame. What need had an experiment for clothes? But here was a man.

I pushed him back, and he curled onto his side, like a child or a cat. I bundled the blankets over him as well as I could, given I had laid him on top of them. Short-sighted. It would have to do - at least someone was using the bed.

Though he took up the whole bed, he somehow looked small and uncertain. His skin was rough and warm, and he smelled. But he looked comforted. I peered into his pupils to check their dilation, and then checked his pulse. 62 beats per minute. Low, but acceptable. He seemed stable, but stared into my face, confused.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled, cheeks heating. "I was checking your vital signs. I needed to know your condition was stable." He looked accepting, or perhaps resigned.

I left him to fetch some water and whatever food I could find. I'm afraid I had only the remnants of a bread loaf, a few withered apples and the odd piece of cheese in the apartment. My eyes fell on a book of poems given to me by Elizabeth, which I had left carelessly strewn on the table along with a half-eaten breadloaf, a lantern, and a number of tomes about human musculature, and I decided to carry it back to the bedroom and read to the creature, as Elizabeth or Henry had so often done for me when I was ill. I grabbed stacks of books and shifted them onto the floor, my efforts laughable in the face of the squalor I had created.

I became aware that the creature was calling out, distressed – he was speaking – or trying to, but the sounds fell thick and garbled from his tongue. I could understand nothing but my name.

I hurried back.

"You needn't be afraid of my leaving, I've only gone to fetch a few things." I perched on the edge of the bed and pressed the food into his hands. "Do you…know how to eat?" But his blackened lips curled into a smile and slowly, he ate.

"You need to rest," I told him. "I've brought a book of poems. I thought it might soothe you if I read." He looked up. I dare not leave him in the room alone.

"Why?" His voice was breaking. I could not tell if it was rough from disuse or tears, for he was crying again.

"It's something Henry and Elizabeth do for me when I am ill. It settles me – I'll leave you in peace," I cut myself off, suddenly hesitant.

But he put out his hand and took hold of me. "Stay." His eyes looked wide and haunted. Again I was reminded of William – the way he looked after a bad dream, desperately wanting me to stay yet attempting to seem unaffected in childish pride.

I moved to settle on the floor, but he shifted, uncurling his knees to create a space for me on the bed, and tugged my wrist until I gave in and sat, exhausted.

"Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee,

Before I knew thy face or name;

So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame

Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be," I began, smiling as I thought of Elizabeth.

Of course she had given me love poetry. I paused, a too-familiar cough scratching up in my throat.

My creation lay on his side, and had curled around me so that my arm pressed against his legs, and my back was to his broad chest. An hour ago I had done everything to escape this but I was so tired, and a chill had sunk to my bones. I hardly noticed the blood-slick and the smell for his kindness.

"Still when, to where thou wert, I came,

Some lovely glorious nothing I did see," I continued, allowing myself to slump back.

I could feel his deep, even breaths. His warmth was like a furnace behind me, and my side-long glance met quiet eyes.

My voice had trailed into silence. I was too tired. Soon I would have to sleep… which entailed movement. Better to stay and finish the poem.

"But since my soul, whose child love is,

Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,

More subtle than the parent is

Love must not be, but take a body… too," I murmured.

The page blurred before my vision. My creation's arm came up to brace my sagging shoulders and I surrendered to fatigue.

Hours ago, I carried this body through the night, his whole frame wasted by suffering – inflicted by these hands. I watched his last breaths fog and dissipate and I – I was left alone in the arctic dawn.

I faced a world without the one man who could bear to face me – to justify my existence or to absolve it. I had shown myself to him aboard Walton's ship expecting to meet his knife, but he had extended the hand of compassion to me– this wretch! I could not go on; I must follow him.

I built Victor a towering pyre, determined to do something good with my hands before I destroyed them. I settled him carefully on the wood and struck sparks at the base. I could not bear to leave him and laid myself down beside him, waiting for the flames to purify us both.

Impossibly, I awoke at the moment of my birth. Victor is restored to me. I know not how or why I was given this gift, but I will not leave this man – this fragile and brilliant soul.

Chapter Text

I pricked the creature’s finger with a needle, watching his face closely for a reaction. The finger was jerked back - median nerve functional in the right hand. Good.

My creature lay stretched on the table from which he had fallen only yesterday. We had struggled down to the laboratory after a groggy and stiff awakening. Sunlight slipped in from the eastern windows, lending the man’s skin a warm pallor where it fell across his chest, also disclosing the faint purpling around his ridged scars.

The lighting’s fury had left my intricate mechanisms charred and twisted, a few bits of debris littering the floor and the operating table itself. I should have felt dismay at the destruction of my efforts, but strangely, I was relieved that a second attempt was rendered impossible. Sweating, I shifted the metal table to the sunnier side of the lab, propping the bent leg with a treatise on the alchemical properties of lightning, which had turned out to be quite wrong. 

The morning and perhaps early afternoon were consumed in conducting examinations to determine the success of my experiment. I had nothing to mark the time but the shifting sunlight. His mental powers were acute - he understood language! Physically however… He was not currently capable of fine motor control, and I was not sure the nerves had connected properly between the left foot and ankle – pain sensitivity was markedly less in that appendage. His clumsy attempts at speech concerned me too. His tongue was thick and heavy in his mouth, sounds coming out muddled, like a beast imitating language. Those noises always caused a clench in my stomach which dissipated only slowly, the way one feels after a nasty shock.

I held open a translucent eyelid, bringing my candle close to test pupil dilation. Muscles tightened under my hand, and I started, nearly dropping the candle. His yellowed eye, still forced open, tracked the candle’s progress. With a shiver, I released him. 

“I need to check your responsiveness to light,” I told him, half an apology.

 I brought the candle close again, watching in satisfaction as his pupil shrank. Yesterday, this eye had stared flatly, muscles still and cold, but now it twitched under my fingers, tracking my every motion, apprehensive.

I set about cleaning his incisions and dousing them with the elixir I had designed to make this patchwork body whole. Now that his blood circulated, this should rapidly close up the raw places where I had stitched flesh to flesh. Perhaps it would reduce the scarring, too. Absently, I drew my thumb across the deep cut running the length of his upper body, feeling how the skin puckered around the thread.

I soon lost myself in the rhythm of cleaning the seams, checking the stitching’s integrity, and dripping tincture into the hollows where the flesh joined flesh. I had completed the creature’s torso and moved to his right shoulder, oddly tense under my inquisitive fingers, when he spoke, or tried to.

“Cre-ter ih… men to hurt sso?” Each sound was uttered carefully, but the affect was still muddy.

“Sorry?” I looked him over, trying to see what he could be asking.

His frame was stiff on the table, one hand clutching the table’s edge, and his downturned eyebrows lent him a fierce expression.

“I’m sorry if it stings a bit, but it will help you ever so much – we don’t want any more of the…” I waved my hand, unsure. “Blood. Leaking.”

I tried for a reassuring smile. “I’m nearly finished.”

He grimaced, attempting to mirror me. I dropped my eyes back to the stitching on his shoulder, unable to bear the sight of perfect teeth under shriveled lips. I wiped away more blood than usual to see that the skin had pulled around the fraying thread. Frowning, I pressed the opening wider and poured on rather a lot of elixir – his fit had undone a lot of good work. I lifted his wrist.

“Unclench your hand.”

Impatient, I tried to smooth out the great fingers, but they remained a stiffened fist. 

“Vih-tur…”

“Surely you can understand –”

The flask was snatched from my hand.

“No. More.”

It shattered in his grip.

“You’ve ruined the last of it!” I cried out, horrified. His recovery might be slowed by months!

The heedless brute merely swung his legs off the table with a grunt.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I demanded, leaning towards his face as he made to stand.

But he crumpled, groaning. One hand still clutched the table’s edge, as if it could have stopped his descent.

I dropped by his side, terrified of a relapse – perhaps the kidneys had been too degraded, or could the body be rejecting the blood vessels harvested from the slaughterhouse? I reached for his pulse. He was breathing in harsh gasps and his whole frame telegraphed pain. My fingers fluttered and my eyes roamed over him… there were too many possibilities.

“What is the matter? Please!” I could not determine the source of his pain.

He clamped his hand over his right shoulder, keening a little.

“You will have to try again,” I said, uneasy.

He raised his head.

“It burns!” he roared. 

The incision. The tincture! It was highly acidic – not suitable for the living.

“Oh God – I didn’t think…” Guilt pulled at me like a living thing.

I eased him onto his side, determined now to redress my error. Something for the pain – Laudanum!  Surely I had some among this confounded jumble! But no, I never wanted to touch the stuff, and a patient – the thought had never occurred to me.

Muttering profanities, I hastened to bring him what comforts I could from the apartment, the pained sounds issuing from his hunched form dogging me up the steps.

I fetched a glass of water and as many of my bedclothes as I could carry, snatching up the abandoned book of poetry as I went.

He was much as I had left him when I returned, but the pained rasps had weakened. I coaxed him to swallow the water, and did my best to cover his large frame, struggling to get the sheets under him so that he was not lying on the floor.

He looked at me with tired, questioning eyes.

“I’m afraid it’s best to leave the tincture on instead of rinsing it off.”

He nodded jerkily, exhausted. 

 “It’s the last I have, and your shoulder needs to mend if it is to regain normal functioning.”

I presented him the book of poetry, a wordless apology. He smiled wanly, the scar on his cheek wrinkling.

And so, I read to him again.

But there would be no drifting to sleep for me here, though bone-numbing exhaustion dragged at every limb. I could not escape the fact that the suffering I tried to distract this man from was caused by my own hands. Those hoarse and broken noises gnawed at me like a scratching in my brain.

We settled into an uncomfortable, but steady rhythm in the following days. I was utterly unprepared for company, and he proved the oddest houseguest imaginable. Word and motion came out jumbled, and he could not move about without disturbing the already-cluttered apartment. Under his graceless feet, papers tore and scattered, models and scientific implements were crushed, books trampled, and once, mineral powders dusted about the kitchen floor like flour. My unexpected guest’s struggles chagrined me, but so did his destruction.

He spent many of his waking hours reading, which greatly shocked me. I endeavored to question him about his acquisition of this knowledge, and he began a complex explanation, but we grew mutually frustrated by my inability to decipher his meaning. He sat lightly in an old armchair which had been left behind by the previous tenant, poring over a copy of Plato’s Republic which I had lying about from a long-abandoned lecture course on the nature of the soul. 

After my fifth entreaty for clarity or repetition, a certain light entered his eye, recalling to me my dear Henry’s attempts to explain to me just why he enjoyed smiling at babies, and talking to old men, and asking travelers what they were seeking. Clerval’s frustrated question re-echoed in my mind, “Won’t you ever care what the world means, not what it’s made of?”

I felt certain my creature meant to hurl the Republic straight at my head. But he breathed out a long sigh, and restrained himself – I do not know whether through some moral instinct towards me, or respect for the philosopher. But he only looked at me with a smile both sad and supercilious, as if he understood me better than I knew myself. This so infuriated me that I fled to my laboratory and have not dared to broach the question with him since.

He slept in my bed, while I retreated to the cot I had set up in that den of filthy creation. I had abandoned my bed for a cot closer to my labors when the leaves had turned newly green – now they were withered and fallen; I had spent hours in that close room, consumed by my labors and relishing every minute, but now I could hardly endure its damp confines.

The sight of my implements turned my stomach, and the husk of my intricate machinery designed to conduct life-giving lightning seemed to loom over me, seeking vengeance. I dreaded sleep every night. I felt that I must soon succumb to the illness which I had been fighting off for so long; chills seized me from time to time, or spells of dizziness. I craved rest, but met only turmoil and confusion.

I was aware that something would have to be done – our shared existence was uncomfortable and unsustainable: I hardly possessed either the energy or the funds to go and purchase food and some sort of clothing for him – everything I owed being entirely too small. And I could not remember the last time I had paid the landlord of this meager and dingy establishment. I longed to return home, but I could not bear the thought of allowing my family to meet my greatest shame. And yet I could not abandon him – weak and suffering as he was.

One might guess my creature’s presence brought only chaos; yet at times his company was to me like that of a trusted friend, lending me a tranquility I had not felt in many months. He showed unflagging care for my wellbeing despite his own miserable condition. He proffered me the little food left in the house, and whenever I suffered a dizzy spell in his presence, he pushed me into the old arm chair, or dropped my coat over my shoulders. 

I ought to have been overwhelmed with gratitude, but there were moments when the sight of him filled me with revulsion and horror, and I wished with all my being that I had never bestowed upon him the spark of life.

His image pursued me into sleep – those hands, knotted with scars and far too large, closed over my beloved Elizabeth’s neck. She screamed my name, but I could do nothing. Screams gave way to hissed sobs. The veins stood out in her lovely face, now a distorted mask of terror. The fiend watched, exultant, then turned to meet my eyes. With a wet crunch, it was over. Laughing, he flung her aside like refuse. I cradled her cold figure, but her head dropped back, back, back, with a muted grinding sound, exposing her purpled throat. My hands came away sticky and red from her hair.

She called my name, old blood trickling from the corner of her lips.

“You – you’ve done this.” Her eyes, which ought to have sparked with life, accused me flatly.

Her skin yellowed and shriveled, lips blackening.

“I trusted in your greatness.” Her breath carried the stink of decay.

“Please, Victor,” she reached for me with rotting hands.

“Victor.”

“Victor!”

“Victor!”

Elizabeth’s condemning cries changed into the voice of that miserable monster. They pursued me as I sat up, heaving for breath, shaking in every limb, cold sweat on my brow.

By the dim and yellow light of the moon, I perceived a shape huge and hideous looming above me. It was the wretch! He fixed putrid eyes on me, opening his jaws to mutter my name. He reached for me, but at the thought of being pinned by those fierce hands I sprang from my bed with a cry. The bedclothes tangled about my foot and I fell, still scrambling to get away.

He turned to follow, still reaching – concerned, I think - and yet my whole being repulsed him with horror. My only thoughts were of flight, but my trembling fingers could not manage the door. I pressed back against it, but the darkened room reeled about me, only the fiend remaining fixed in his inexorable pursuit.

I fled, taking refuge behind the table where the awful demon had been birthed, trying to steady my breathing. The darkness might serve to conceal me. There was a chance he might not find me, might leave me in peace.

“Creator, where are you?”

 I shrank back at the hoarse question. How I loathed the sound of his voice!

Peering desperately through the gloom I saw the faint outline of my desk, the moonlight catching the curve of a beaker and glinting along the blade of a scalpel.

“Please Victor, you are not well,” With deliberate steps he paced the perimeter of the lab; soon he must discover me despite the darkness.

I crept to the desk, reaching out for the scalpel. Perhaps it was some trick of the light, or my still-agitated nerves, but my hands changed, becoming pale and scarred – those of my accursed creation! Loathing for the scalpel and the beakers – this cursed place of failed creation, dug into me. I slashed my arm across the desk, clearing the cluttered surface with one savage sweep. I cried out, cursing that wretch, cursing the implements of life, damning everything that had caused him to be.

“Curse these hands!”

These hands.

They had made the monster – he had not created himself.

Like an avalanche, it buried me.

My hatred was not truly for the laboratory, not for the scalpel, not for the creature, but for their maker.

Mad fear clawed up my throat. I was overwhelmed with despair. I felt I must go mad – I cast about for some escape, for a scapegoat to bear the blame, but like a mountain it crushed me. I was the author of this hell.

These hands. These hands!

The creature was on me in a moment, strong arms closing fast about me; trembling, I was too weak to cast him off.

These hands.

Unwillingly, I sank against him and was still.

I raved. Lucidity came briefly, if at all in the throes the of fever that swallowed me. My recollections of that time are few and hazy. Sometimes I dreamed it was Clerval who was my nurse; other times my guilty soul was visited by the most terrible of dreams.

I thought I toiled once again in the charnel house, dredging up raw materials for my work. But when I turned back the grave flannel, the face of my mother stared up at me, livid in death. At other times, I imagined I labored over my creation once again. But the massive form dwindled under my knife until it was little William, pale and purpled, tiny body knotted with stitches and scars. His flaxen curls hung limp over clouded eyes.

A kindly figure leaned over me – Clerval?

“Oh save me, save me!” I cried, struggling frantically.

“I’ve done something awful! That which cannot be forgiven!”

I stretched out my miserable hands to him, and he clasped them. I slipped away again, absurdly grateful.

The world rocked under me. Something cold was falling on my cheeks. I blinked back into awareness. My creature’s face was over me, and tree trunks towered above him under a leaden sky whitened by falling snow. Pine branches crisscrossed the sky, the only color in a bleak and silent world.

“This is not the apartment,” I said stupidly.

I struggled. “Where are you taking me? Where is this place?” I demanded, voice rising.

He paused, trying to contain my flailing limbs. “Peace, creator. You have been very ill.”

I spluttered, too many questions pressing on my tongue.

“I am taking you home, to Geneva,” he stated, far too calm.

I stilled.

No.

My family must not see him, my unforgivable mistake.

“Put me down at once!” My shouting rang out, curiously muted in the snowy landscape.

Gingerly, he placed me on my feet. My boots sank into the snow.

Dizziness rushed over me; it was only through a great effort of will that I remained upright.

A sickening thought pierced me.

“My laboratory! My notes!” I clutched at my hair.

“If you fear the discovery of your secret sins, you may put your mind to rest,” he said wryly.

“You cannot possibly have been thorough enough!” I gesticulated wildly, only a nearby trunk keeping me upright.

“I’ve left evidence strewn simply everywhere!” I began. “Why, the machines, the papers, the –”

“Victor, I burned your laboratory.” 

Chapter Text

My ears rang. My laboratory? Burned? My mind scrambled, blank and white like the snow beneath me, and yet near bursting with unformed thoughts.

“Why?” I faltered.

“To erase my existence,” he answered, stoic.

I hardly heard him; my mind churned over the new facts of my existence: Alone, I faced this creature among the severe pines, the snow-filled valleys, and the misty rivers. My old life had gone up in flames. A horrible feeling gripped me, like an inexorable tide pulling me out to sea; there was no going back.

I lifted my head. One thought pierced through the clamor in my mind: he said Geneva.

“How did you know?” I demanded. “Geneva? How!”  

I traced a ragged path in the snow, my miserable creation forming the focal point of my frantic steps.

“I read your letters,” he replied, calm and unabashed.

Rage at first deprived me of utterance.

My letters!

Those correspondences represented to me the ones I most dearly loved, and I felt sickened, as if this wretch had dirtied something sacred by his touch. All of my nightmares descended to plague me – the faces of my dear family livid in death, at the hands of the man before me!

“Wretch!” I roared.

I flew at him, beyond anger, beyond reason. Neatly, he stepped aside, leaving me to grapple uselessly and fall heavily in the snow.

“I expected this reception,” he sighed from behind me.

I pushed myself to my knees, clenching a fist in the snow as I tried vainly to make him understand how he had wronged me.  

“You mean to say,” I said, low, “you’ve carried me off to this desolate waste, destroyed my laboratory, read my letters? Do you have any idea –”

“Be calm, Frankenstein! I entreat you, hear me,” he lifted his hands.

“I will not! You cannot justify this!”

I stumbled to my feet, determined to make him feel my rage, though my weakening steps cut a listing path towards him.

“I saw no other way, creator. I could get no help – all your kind shun and scorn me, driving me away because of my hideous aspect.”

I frowned, contemptuous, hardly hearing his excuses.

“Where are we? Do you even know the way home?” I demanded through chattering teeth. I swayed. With a thump, I fell back into the snow.

He stooped, setting a gnarled hand on my arm, but savagely I thrust it back. He pulled away, resigned, and began to fumble about in a satchel that hung at his side.

“The university!” I burst out. “Why did you not leave me there?” I gestured sharply. A wild desire to escape seized me; I knew that I must work out the way forward, but my mind languidly tumbled over the past: burned laboratory, the letters, and the vast forest.

“Victor, no one would hear me, though I tried. All men detest me,” he said, sorrowful.

“Truly, I feared the fever would carry you away in that apartment.” He held up something – a map! His manner, subdued – even gentle - served only to stoke my rage.

“And you think it will not touch me in this sea of ice?” My lips trembled with cold and fury.

“Please, Frankenstein, I saw no other path.” He stooped again, seeking, I think, to lift me out of the snow, but at the sight of my furious countenance, he subsided. 

“Devil! You’ve brought me here to die!”

A fearful change worked over his features, hideous aspect distorting into a snarl.

“If you die, I am damned!”

His hand shot out, fisting in my curls. My feet dangled above the snow though I scrabbled at the huge hand with all my strength.

“This accursed skin!” He cried, shaking me roughly; my head snapped back, teeth rattling in my jaw.

“If you, Creator, will not look on me with compassion, then no man ever will!”

His harsh form blurred before my eyes as if obscured by mist, and my breath came in stutters.

“And you dare say I wish for your death!” The roar left my ears aching, and his hot breath washed over my face. Bile rose up the back of my throat.

The awful throbbing pressure on my scalp eased as my boot sank in the snow again.

“I will not let you die, Frankenstein.” 

He spoke again, but his utterance was lost to me in darkness and distance. A buzzing began in my ears and my knees folded – wet and cold subsumed me.

Awareness returned in snatches: the glow of a fire, fabric being wrapped over fingers throbbing with cold, a cup knocking against my teeth.

A fit of wet coughing spasmed through my chest and I fought to sit up. Layers of fabric weighed me down, increasing my efforts. I was jostled into an upright position – I was being borne by my creature again. The fit eased now that I could breath. I grimaced, turning my head to the side and spitting phlegm onto the frosted ground. Exhausted, I sank back against his arm, unable even to protest being carried thus.

“Victor?” Still so concerned.

Hazy recollections of shouted accusations in my mind. I frowned at my hands, wrapped in cloth and folded in my lap, and did not answer.

Sluggishly, I turned over the chunks of waking memories: the forest, the burned laboratory, the letters, and before that, cursing my own hands: these things all tightened around my chest like bands of iron. I tried to lay them out and unpick them with reason. Was my fury against my creature, or myself? And why did I fear so to return to Geneva? I longed to fall again into oblivion and escape this miserable tangle, but I could not silence my thoughts, nor could I come to any resolution. The fever damned my rational thoughts to futile and self-devouring loops, a serpent consuming its own tail.  

My creature’s promise to me re-echoed over and over in my mind, like a shout rebounding off the sheer cliffs and mountainsides above Geneva. Shame for a long time kept me silent, yet I must address him, or never know peace.

“Why? Why didn’t you let me die?” I stared at my blanketed knees, blurring in the gathering dark.

He drew breath, I guessed, to speak, but I hurried on.

“You have more reason than anyone to hate me.” My breath fogged pale. “I made you a wretch. I damned you from birth. I know you suffer – I’ve seen it.”

I waited, but he said nothing. The silence oppressed me; an awful feeling began to gnaw at me. Unable to bear it, unwillingly I spoke again. 

“So why did you not abandon me, or even end my life?”

“That is the one thing I will never do.”

The solemn finality of this utterance silenced me for some time.

“But why? Why?” I whispered. To my frustration, my voice came out thick. My cheeks were wet.

“You are the instrument which has given me life,” he said, reverent.

“Your life is hell,” I cried, hiding my face.

“You – it would be better… I ought never to have kindled that spark,” I mumbled into my hands.

“It is not so, Frankenstein.” His great strides ceased.

“Life, though it is suffering, is dear to me.”

“What can be dear about this!” I cried bitterly, seizing his hand: monstrous, scarred, cadaverous.

His whole bulk went rigid and still. At last he broke the silence with a heaved breath, placing my feet firmly down on the frost-hardened ground.

“Look, creator.” he said heavily, raising his hand in an expansive gesture to encompass the surrounding night. Bemused, I complied.

Evergreens rose stark into a deep blue sky, stars glinting brilliantly in the still, harsh air. Branches cracked in the breathless dark. Frost encrusted the whole scene, winking dully in the star’s light, drifts of snow gathering at the feet of the largest pines. The constellations cast only a diffused and nocturnal light, which revealed that we stood atop a crest. Dim hills rolled away below, crosshatched in moon-shadow. At least I perceived that a wide river wound away to the north, a black ribbon flecked with faintly mirrored stars, cutting through the white world. A solemn and lovely moon shone through the pines, crowning dead winter with unearthly radiance.

“There is much to cherish in this world, creator,” the towering man confided, as if this was the sole truth that had carried him through a lifetime of sorrow.   

We stood side by side, gazing at the moon.

“You woke me into this world. That is why I cannot hate you, Frankenstein. Though I am wretched, the beautiful remains. Nothing beautiful without struggle,” he finished, as if quoting something. 

I frowned, mulling over his words. Plato!

A small laugh spilled from me, alien fondness and pride for my creation rushing through me at hearing the ancient philosopher tumbling from his blackened lips. But that sound of mirth was rapidly swallowed in nocturnal gloom.

The moon broke over the tops of the pines; Orion sank behind the hills. We remained. At last he broke the silence, hesitant.

“Victor, there is something I must ask from you.”

“Anything,” I replied.

The shock of receiving compassion from such a being still weighed so heavily on my soul that truly I was ready to grant him any wish.

“I will not exist alone.”

A chill rushed over me. My thoughts plummeted away from the divine beauties of nature, and I became uncomfortably aware of a raw aching in my extremities. I labored again under grim apprehensions and anxieties, and now awaited with dread the addition of another.

“I am scorned and hated by all mankind – there is not one of your kin who will admit one wretched as I to their affections. Am I not miserably alone? But you, my creator, are bound to me with ties that only the extinction of one of us can dissolve. Grant me your compassion and affection – do not banish me from your presence when I have delivered you to the end of your journey.”

I stared, stricken.

Perceiving this, he amended, “If mercy is beyond your power, then grant me justice, and extinguish this spark. Absolve me or end me, for I will not exist alone.”

Long silence brooded over the dark. He stirred nervously beside me, yet I remained in fixed concentration.

At last, I sought to answer him. “I hear the justice of your plea. But I do not know if I have the strength to meet it.”

“So you have purposed to destroy me,” he said flatly.

“No!” I cried, sickened at heart. “How could I end your life? You have shown nothing but mercy to me, whom you ought to hate most in all the world! With your own lips you have lifted my greatest burden: you have forgiven me the sin of your existence.”

“But you despise me, Creator, surely -” he exclaimed.

“Oh, it is not thus—not thus,” I interrupted.

“…perhaps,” I amended, a shamed whisper. “It is only…” I pulled my hands through my hair in agitation. How could I explain to him that which I myself did not fully understand?

“You are not the object of my hatred. It has seemed so, I confess. Oh, I have been miserably unjust!” I began to pace, stumbling on joints stiffened with cold.

“I have neither the power nor the desire to destroy you,” I assured him.

I lapsed into silence, struggling not to recoil from truths I had buried within me. I fought to grasp them, not to turn away, just as sometimes I had recoiled from the pallid and hideous things I had disturbed under the earth.

“And yet I do not believe I possess within me the compassion which you are owed. You are my creation – my Adam, but I have not the mighty love of the Creator ‘that moves the sun and all the stars…’”

“In truth …” I began, swallowing with cold dread, “I do not think I know what it means to give affection. My Elizabeth and Henry, all my life they have cared for me – indeed they have poured out a vast ocean of affection on my undeserving head.” This confession tore me deeply; I continued only by fancying I uttered my thoughts to the uncaring night.

“But I, what have I given them? Unread letters? Empty promises of greatness?” Hot scorn burned in my heart.  

“If I cannot even return affection when it is shown to me by those who love me best…” Words failed.  

I gazed up at the stars, intermittently clouded by my breath.

“I have nothing to offer you,” I declared quietly, unable to face him.

“If you will not promise me your compassion, then grant me your presence,” he rumbled, seeking to catch my gaze.

I gathered my will and looked into his face. “I do not see how my company is worth having, but I will not withhold it from you.”

“I do not ask for more, Frankenstein,” he said, his countenance bespeaking that same implacable compassion he had shown on the night of his awakening. I dropped my eyes, ashamed.

“There is one thing I can give you,” I said, struck on a sudden by a slight means of atonement, “if you will have it.”

He turned an inquiring gaze on me.

“A name.”

Dearly I hoped he would receive my offer. I did not dare lift my eyes.

“I… should like that very much,” he replied, suppressing with difficulty the emotion from his voice.

“You shall be Adam!” I exclaimed in a rush of strange joy.

I opened my mouth, in sudden fear that I had miss-stepped again into hubris.

But he inclined his head to the vast heavens, features gentling in wonder.

“Adam,” he stated. “I am Adam.”

I paid for my exertions. Of the remaining days of that harried flight to Geneva, I recall only a few hazy impressions. Rarely was I strong enough to walk, submitting mostly to being carried about. This awkward mode of travel would have troubled me greatly had I been more frequently conscious while Adam employed it. He leapt and bounded through the frosty terrain, rolling hills giving way to mild valleys. The land disappearing under his strides became harsh and steep, and I knew we had entered the Alps. 

I shall relate one instance which I half-recall, the rest having been recounted to me later: the warmth of the day and the sunlight upon my face restored my spirits, and I awakened. I gave no sign, so Adam remained unaware. My mind again turned to our conversations, wherein I discovered a revelation. I stiffened, attempting to sit upright in his arms, and cried, “Plato!” with great agitation.

Adam supposed I was raving again and endeavored to sooth me.

“Peace, Victor. All is well,” he murmured.

“No, it is not!” I emphatically informed him. “You’ve quoted philosophers to me! You!” I stammered, incoherent. “You can speak!” I struggled violently, endeavoring to gain my feet.

Alarmed by my furious agitations, my creature tried to restrain my flailing limbs.

“Be calm! I entreat you!” He pleaded, only with difficulty restraining me.

“No! You can speak! You make yourself understood!” I laughed, manic.

At last, Adam set me on my feet, afraid I might slip from his grasp and harm myself in the fall.

“How?” I cried. “How!”

I seized the front of his shirt and attempted to shake him – this of course producing no result.

“This – this is marvelous!” I shouted, and then toppled back in a fit, overcome.

Victor’s worsening condition drove me to a frantic pace. Lucidity blessed him briefly if at all – fevered dreams gripped him: the names of his dear family often crossed his lips. So too did tortured curses upon his own head or familiar maledictions upon mine. Upon several occasions, he called me Clerval, gripping me with pale hands and pleading with me to save him, wild eyes staring from an ashen face.

Sometimes he shivered violently, skin colorless and clammy; sometimes he sweated and grew hot to the touch. Other times he became pale to the lips, his face devoid of color save the bruise-like circles under his eyes. Fits of coughing wracked him, seeming to me entirely too forceful for his slight frame to endure. I do not think I ever beheld Frankenstein in a state of true health, but this pallid wreck recalled to me horribly his wasting illness in the arctic.

I will never tell Victor, but most of the food I gave him I stole from hovels and meagre shepherd’s huts – solitary dwellings hunched on field margins or settled under the eaves of the pines. Winter had closed nature’s kindly hands: I charted our course through barren forests, empty fields, and river valleys blasted by frost.

I did not dare take the time to seek for roots, berries, or nuts as I was accustomed to, and I feared to supply this simple food for my creator lest I accidentally worsen his illness by feeding him something which his finer constitution might rebel against. The privations of hunger and cold I had endured before; though this patchwork hide crumble under me, Victor must reach Geneva.

I hardly ventured to rest, walking under sun and stars like, seeking shelter only when I judged it necessary for my creator’s health. Frankenstein’s feverish mutterings and rasping breaths, though they both portended illness, comforted me in the weary hours of nocturnal solitude, grounding me in the present: he yet lived. When his breaths grew silent or shallow, I could not but imagine that once again I carried the corpse of my creator through winter’s eternal night.

Frankenstein’s declining lucidity presented me with a singular problem: I had little chance to discuss how we might possibly justify this strange tale to his family. This subject invariably caused him great agitation. His sufferings were hateful to me, but the matter weighed with terrible magnitude upon me.

Victor had given his oath not to spurn me, but his family might still drive me away in fear and hatred… and they would be just in doing so. My hands have wrought unutterable evil: I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; I pursued him even to death – and yet he forgave – this wretch!

My whole self was divided: I could not kill the old wasted longings of my being, and this part of me dearly hoped that Frankenstein’s family might not cast me out, and yet I felt that love from the ones I had so profoundly wronged would torment me more deeply than the hatred and scorn which I deserved.

Victor assured me, eyes bright with fever, that his family would not repulse me, speaking of them in angelic terms: he held with ardent faith that their goodness far surpassed his own. But yet he made me swear not to reveal the true depth of his foul deed. Together, we crafted a lie which might possibly explain my presence: I was to be his patient.

Victor proposed to tell them not that he had stitched together my decaying flesh, but that he had grafted new skin to my body, before perhaps horribly burned or otherwise disfigured. However, his worsening state revealed that he would be incapable of persuading his family of anything by the time we reached their door.

The lie then, fell to me.

I purposed to spin my tale thus: I, a wretch born deformed and of massive size, had been all my life an outcast and an object of hatred to men. All men hate the wretched, and the outpouring of their wrath had further disfigured me. I owed a great debt to Victor, the only man to see in my pitiable state something which he might improve. He had worked feverishly to discover some process by which my burned and scarred skin might be replaced. Though the result was not beautiful, it improved my abject state. So driven was he to complete this work that he had dropped out of university and pushed quite beyond the limits of his health, becoming ill. Then, another tragedy befell him: his living quarters caught fire and burned quite to the ground. Horrified by his decline and moved by his kindness, I resolved to convey him home as rapidly as I could, hoping that there he might be cured and restored. With such a story I designed to deceive them.

At last we drew near to Geneva, passing close by Lausanne. I travelled near the lakeshore when I was able. We passed a miserable day of chilled rain, and when evening began to fall, the rain thickened and became icy. For Victor’s sake, I sought shelter – he had not been lucid all day, lacking even the strength to struggle and cry out, though I could see by his anguished face that his dreams were troubled.

 Through the gloom I beheld a solitary structure – a barn. We took shelter above the heads of cattle and sheep, among bales of hay preserved for winter. At my entrance the animals lowed and bleated, disturbed, but the quieted once I ascended to the loft and was hidden from them.

Victor shivered terribly, his frame all over stiffened with cold. His breath came in wet rasps through quivering and bluish lips. The rain had soaked through all his layers, and I dared not light a fire to dry him. I tucked him against my chest, endeavoring to warm him with my presence, for once glad of my monstrous size.

Weariness and pain pervaded my whole frame; I slumped back against the mounded straw and dreamt.

But misery awaited me there too – The faces of those I had devoted to destruction rose before my mind, their dying groans drowning me in a sea of guilt. I awoke still damp with rain and sweat. I passed uneasy hours listening to the shifting animals and Frankenstein’s labored breaths, sleep at last rising to swallow me again.

I dreamt I stood once more on the sea of ice below the soaring and desolate height of Mount Blanc, pleading my cause before my creator. Victor sprang at me, consumed by rage. I did not evade him as before, but seized him by the neck, as I had done to his blessed Clerval. His flesh collapsed under my clenching fingers, pulse throbbing wildly, throat bubbling with curses which would never be heard.

I recoiled in horror – no!

But still my unmerciful hands held him aloft. His hate-filled eyes withered the remorse in my breast and I flung him savagely from the icy summit. Frankenstein’s skull split against the bitter ground, an awful crack sounding and resounding among the glacial crags.

He lay white and cold in death, a vast nothing gaping behind his eyes; still that cracking reverberated with fateful magnitude. Gritting my teeth, I pressed my hands to my ears drown out the clamor of the sickening sound, only to feel the thickly clotting and warm blood of my creator against my face!

I started up with a cry, but something weighed me down. I fought, but looking up beheld not the frigid desolation of Mount Blanc, but the dim barn loft. The dull and yellowed moon fell across the wooden floor upon which heaps of straw lay slumped like a herd of slumbering beasts.

Victor!

I raised a shaking hand to the back of his head, brushing my thumb over hair dampened only by rain. Still I trembled; the dream would not leave me. I sought to check his pulse but the sight of my scarred hand on his neck was unendurable. I endeavored to comfort myself by listening for his quiet breaths.

“No!” He muttered, anguished. “Leave him! He has not wronged you!”

An agitated motion bestirred his limbs. I rested my hand on his tangled and sweaty curls, attempting reassure both myself and Frankenstein, but he was held fast by some unquiet spectre.

I cast about for some way to lift this misery: a faint hope inspired me. I drew Victor’s head against my chest that he might hear my heartbeat and my voice. Stretching out my legs, I drew a deep breath and let the beloved words of Paradise Lost spill from my lips:

“O fleeting joys

Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes!

Did I request thee, Maker, from my Clay

To mould me Man, did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me…”

I hoped that a steady stream of speech might reach through Victor’s dreams and banish what haunted him. I dared not speak from my own heart – my black thoughts must serve only to deepen his sufferings – therefore I entrusted Milton to draw him from his perturbed sleep. I let the well-worn syllables roll from my tongue, comforted by their familiarity.

“…and over wrath grace shall abound.”

Victor’s mumblings had ceased some time ago, and his anxious movements had stilled. His head now titled back to weigh on my arm. I glanced down at him. Half-lidded and glazed with exhaustion, his eyes met mine. He woke! Abashed, I trailed into silence.

“Adam,” he said, “Why did you stop?”

He shifted, turning his cheek against me, eyelids falling closed.

Shaken, I strove to recall where I left off. Victor uttered a sleepy and petulant demand to continue. I raised an eyebrow and began again.

“Greatly instructed I shall hence depart,

Greatly in peace of thought, and have my fill

Of knowledge, what this Vessel can contain;

Beyond which was my folly to aspire…”

I strove gently to chagrin him, but if my creator was chastened by the passage’s similarity to his own endeavors, he did not show it. The corner of his lips twitched up. I let the tide of words roll over us both.

Victor’s breathing slowed; his form finally lax in sleep, countenance slackening in tranquility. Still I continued, if only for myself.

“For God is also in sleep, and Dreams advise,

Which he hath sent propitious, some great good

Presaging, since with sorrow and heart’s distress

Wearied I fell asleep: but now lead on…”

Tomorrow, I mused, our journey must come to an end. I would deliver Victor to his family. He would be saved, but I must await their judgement. Surely I must be damned. I tried to resign myself, to trammel again those wild and deathless longings, but the long-held dreams of an end to my solitude would not be suppressed.

Whatever scorn and hatred his family might heap upon my head, Victor’s promise remained to comfort me. Even if he proved unfaithful, still might I take joy from those times when he did not look upon me with hatred – though they be brief, those sacred moments were far more than ever I had experienced before.

And a name. He had blessed me with a name.

The sufferings of tomorrow lost their terror. The final lines of Milton’s poem trickled from my mouth, blessed oblivion closing about me.

“The World was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:

They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow,

Through Eden took their solitary way.”

Chapter Text

I stood upon the pillared porch and lifted the great gilt knocker; it was wrought in the shape of a snarling lion, and it shone with a savage glint under the pale and distant moon. The moment was at hand – we had reached the House of Frankenstein. Three knocks cracked sharply through the dark, each one calling down heavy dread upon me. I waited, watching my and Victor’s breaths curl and fog, the only thing moving in the still of the night.

Within, locks turned and clicked. The massive double doors split, revealing a sleepy serving maid holding up a candle. The house was darkened, the hour being some time past midnight judging by the position of Orion and the Hydre; the household was likely plunged in slumber.

“Good evening kind, sir,” She mumbled to her toes, pausing to yawn. “I beg your indulgence –”

Finally she looked up, and up. Her face paled in horror, the candle dropping from her limp hand. I thought she might faint, but all at once she screamed, and with a flurry of movement she was gone, swallowed up by the dim and silent house. It was as if I had imagined the whole encounter, save for the candle rolling slowly across a rug worked with ostentatious mythological scenes, flames rising behind it to blacken gods and heroes.

I hastened to stamp out the small fire, hardly feeling the flames on my feet. The faint light was extinguished, plunging me again in darkness, save the weak glow from the moon which stole in the open doors behind me. I stood in a vast and open space, flecks of moonlight glinting off gold and smooth stone. I had crossed the threshold. Deep unease seized me and I longed to flee the gaping hall - alien, intricate, frigid - and escape back to the realm of the welcoming moon.

But Victor. Neither the scream still aching in my ears nor my hurried jostling to put out the fire had caused him to stir. He had lain pale and insensate all day, too weak even to cough heartily.

I gathered my courage and called out.

“Good evening?”

The sound of my voice rebounded through the cavernous entryway.

“I am sorry to trouble you, but I come on a matter of urgent importance…”

The rough echoing of my voice alarmed me and I trailed into silence.

I rapped on the knocker again, the echoing clacks at length summoning an old man from the recesses of the house. It was apparent he had been roused from his bed by his rumpled sleep-clothes and by the nightcap still perched on his grey head.

“Sir,” he called out, flustered, “whatever your business may be, I am afraid it must wait – Victor!” 

He had caught sight of my pallid and sickly burden and rushed to me, reaching to cup Victor’s face, laying a hand across his forehead, then brushing his thumb across Victor’s cheekbone.

“So thin… whatever has happened, my son?”

The old man’s brow contracted in worry. So this was Victor’s father. I studied the resemblances. He had the same pale eyes as Victor, though the care they now expressed was wholly foreign to his son’s face. Round spectacles were perched on his long and elegant nose, and what hair poked from under his nightcap was straight and grey.

“Come, we had better get him settled in bed.” With a breath, Victor’s father composed himself.

The irritation and fear with which he had previously addressed me vanished completely from his tone, replaced with worried affection. The old man had given no sign that he noticed my monstrous appearance at all.

With sprightly step he led me up a wide and curving staircase to the upper regions of the house. He seemed to pay me no more mind at all, concerned only for the wellbeing of his dear son. We rushed through a bewildering maze of hallways, the candle dimly lighting rows of painted faces, their eyes mocking my monstrous form, hidden only in bare rags, and the trail of filth my weary feet tracked over the rich carpets.

Victor’s aged father ushered me into a musty room.

“I cannot thank you enough,” he said, looking up into my face. “Please, lay him here,” he began folding back the bedclothes of a large bed.

I stooped, lowing Victor onto the bed. I pulled off the layers of soiled and stained fabrics I had piled over him on our journey, and began to unwrap the cloths I had wound around those agile hands to protect them from the cold. I smoothed his hair away from his temples, running one strand through my fingers before reluctantly stepping back. My arms felt empty and cold.

Monsieur Frankenstein had busied himself. The room was lighted now by several oil lamps, and servants began to appear in the doorway carrying blankets and steaming basins of water. I drew back to the shadows, finding shelter in an alcove wherein sat an elegant writing desk mounded with papers and manuscripts and flanked by high bookshelves.

Victor’s unmoving figure now formed the only stillness in maelstrom of activity and chatter. His father unlaced his boots and drew them off his feet, then supported his head and gave him sips of water. Servants bustled about propping his form with pillows and covering and re-covering his thin frame with fine blankets of ever-increasing thickness.

The babble and bustle overwhelmed my senses, the moving figures blurring before my eyes, their motion and chatter recalling nothing more strongly to me than a busy hive of bees. Comforted by this tranquil recollection of nature, I could no longer hold at bay the profound weariness sucking at me like the tide.

Oblivion was shattered by a touch on my arm. I started back with a half-formed cry, writing implements clattering behind me on the desk. Monsieur Frankenstein’s hand still rested on my arm, consoling. If he noticed my fear, he did not show it.

“You ought to rest, sir.”

I stared, too exhausted and anxious to form a reply.

 “Spend the night here – you must be weary from your travels – all the way from Ingolstadt, no?”

I nodded.

“Accept my hospitality; you’ve brought back our dear Victor and I cannot thank you enough for it,” he said, smiling up into my face with a sort of merry squint. Perhaps he could not see well?

 “Come on, have a good rest, and tomorrow you can tell me your story.”

He took me by the arm, escorting me from the room with a frail grasp. I had not the strength to resist it.

“What is your name, good sir?”

“…Adam.”

“Adam! I am pleased to know you,” he said smiling kindly up at me.

I stumbled, overcome. He had not so much as flinched at my hideous form.

Ignoring my weakness, he offered me a flawless bow. “I am Alphonse Frankenstein.”

 “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” I said, after the silence stretched on far too long.

 “Ah, just here if you please. Oh, I’m afraid we haven’t had guests in awhile. It’s a little dingy, I think. My eyesight is not what it used to be – this lighting is very poor, don’t you agree? You’ll forgive me I hope,” he rambled ushering me into another large chamber.

“I thank you. It is…beautiful,” I replied.

“I took the liberty of asking the servants to prepare a bath for you. I find there is nothing more soothing after a cumbersome day’s travel.”

“You needn’t have gone to the trouble,” I answered after a moment, apprehensive. The rich, from my observations, complicate everything. Exhaustion dragged at me, and embarking on a complex ritual did not seem inviting.

“If you want for anything – if there is anything which will make you more at ease, please, let me know. You are most welcome,” he said.

“Most welcome,” he repeated with a fervent expression.

Victor’s father peered up at me through winking spectacles, really looking at me for the first time. I shrank under his gaze.

His face dropped. But he said only, “Rest.”

Pressing my hand, he departed, and I was left alone. 

The chamber was far too clean, and too full of beautiful and unnecessary things. I drifted to the bed, pressing a hand on the soft white cover. It gave under me, my hand sinking into the bed’s plush depths. Alarmed, I withdrew, leaving a smeared handprint on the white surface. I rubbed my fingers together, feeling the dirt and grit on my skin. The white drapings and shining wooden floors seemed to mock my wretched travel-worn state.

I turned to the lit hearth, in front of which sat a large wooden tub filled with steaming water. Beside it, there was a large cloth, some smaller ones, and what I guessed, after closer inspection, must be soap. 

I dipped a hand into the water. A comforting warmth enveloped it, and I watched with satisfaction as some of the caked dirt dissipated into the tub. I mulled over the best course of action, deciding at last that the soundest method would be to submerge myself in the water. Accordingly, I stripped, laying aside my filthy rags, and stepped into the bath.

Never had I experienced so peaceful and comforting a sensation. The water’s warmth seeped into me, loosening achings so deep I had nearly ceased to think on them. I rested for many minutes with my chin on my knees, gazing into the fire with half-lidded eyes until the water began to cool and the fire shrank to only a few flickering blue flames crowning a bed of glowing embers. I roused myself, and taking the cloth and soap, methodically rubbed the long-caked dirt from my skin. If only the monstrous could so easily be scrubbed away – although I felt a little as if it had.

The ends of my hair swayed about my shoulders. I reached up to finger the lank strands, so different from Victor’s curls or even the way Victor had sketched his creation’s hair in his journal. My fingers encountered a bit of twig. Perhaps my hair ought to be washed as well.

This proved a mad endeavor. Once wet, my long dark hair became nearly one matted mass, and I was forced to work through the tangles blindly with my fingers. The things I discovered while running my fingers through my hair… I know not how I acquired so many small twigs, grass, leaves, and I think, even a moth in those snarled strands. My arms began to ache. I tugged savagely, but this only seemed to worse entrap me. With a low growl, I rose from the bath and, dripping, stalked across the room to retrieve a small knife from my bag. I dropped back into the water, sending up a splash, and began to saw off the matted mass I had created at the bottom of my hair. I let fall the hated wet clumps beside the tub; in the half-light of a dying fire, they nearly disappeared. At last, I was finished. I stood and poured a clean basin of water over my head to rinse away the soap and dirt. I took the large piece of cloth and pulled it over myself to dry my skin, gratified to see more of the grime wiped away.

I padded over to the large bed and sank onto it. Far too yielding. I struggled up from its hold, and stood for a moment. Then I pulled the bedclothes off and curled up amongst them, marveling at their softness against my clean skin. I drifted to sleep in a patch of moonlight which streamed in from a high window.

A loud pounding on the door startled me into wakefulness.

“Sir, if you please, breakfast is served and the family wishes that you might honor them with your company,” a voice called.

The sun had been up for several hours, judging from its position over the mountains. I had slept deeply, and for a long time.

“Sir…?” The voice prompted.

Right. Someone was speaking to me. I stood from my cocoon of blankets, letting them drop from my shoulders as I strode to the door and opened it, to be met with an elderly gentleman – a servant of the family, I guessed. He paled, rapidly backing away.

“Where am I to go?” I called after his retreating form.

He paused long enough to point a shaking finger to the left, then shuffled in the other direction with a speed unbefitting the aged. Morose as that reception might be, it was better than screaming, fainting, or attacking me.

“Thank you,” I called after him.

With a sigh, I donned my only set of clothes, my torn and dirtied shirt and trousers, wishing now I had something clean instead.

Victor’s family was clustered at one end of a table spacious enough for many guests, Alphonse speaking quietly with Elizabeth and Clerval, face downcast. The sun’s radiance illuminated the scene of familial tenderness, streaming in from windows that stretched nearly from the floor to the ceiling. Elizabeth placed a slight hand on Alphonse’s arm, a comforting gesture. Her black and shining hair was unpinned, falling nearly to her waist. She was tall and slender, with bright eyes, a pale complexion, and a dark and level brow. Henry Clerval offered Elizabeth a wan smile, only a pale shadow of the mirth usually present in his face. He stood taller than Alphonse and Elizabeth, with waving golden hair and the look of one who spends many happy hours in the sun. Even though cast down by sorrow, Victor’s family still presented a lovely scene.

I stood a moment gathering myself for the inevitable fear and hatred which must shatter the serenity upon my entrance, as I did, noticing a table against the far wall piled with food: still steaming breads, various cheeses, fruits, and other small and lovely things I could not name. My stomach rumbled at the delicious smells.

“Good morning Adam,” the aged father greeted me jovially.

Cheered by this unexpected kindness, I entered the sunlit room, stooping slightly under the lintel. With a clatter, Elizabeth’s plate fell from her nerveless fingers, bright berries spilling across the carpets. She pressed back against Clerval, eyes wide in her pale face.

“My God,” Clerval muttered, bracing Elizabeth’s shoulders protectively.

Alphonse’s smile dropped from his face. He slipped his spectacles off and polished them, donning them apprehensively.

They stared.

Stark sunshine bared my true monstrosity: the scars that knotted my yellowed and shriveled skin, my unnatural hulking frame, and my gaunt, sunken-in cheeks. I took a steadying breath. Now was the time to prove that this cursed hide masked a being who was like them – who perhaps merited their companionship.

“Good morning, Monsieur Frankenstein,” I replied, inclining my head.

For a long second, there was no reply.

“Good morning…Adam,” He said, after a moment.

“Please my guest, break your fast with us. It is the least I can do to repay our debt of gratitude,” he entreated me, shaken, but ever polite.

I advanced to the table laden with food, hoping to give the family a moment to compose themselves. I paused, overwhelmed at the magnanimous spread before me. The loaves were not course and rough like the fare of the DeLacey’s, but fine and white, in an assortment of intricate shapes. Fruits, unfamiliar and sweet-smelling, lay piled next to cheeses of varied colors and textures, clustered berries, and savory-smelling meats. Behind this, three elegant carafes wafted sweet steam.

Suddenly, Elizabeth was at my elbow, offering me a plate.

“Let me show you what I enjoy for breakfast,” she said, smiling up at me stiffly. She did not raise her eyes high enough to look into my face, and this close, I could see minute shivers passing through her frame. She must indeed be an angel, if she still acted as a gracious hostess when under the grip of terror.

“Won’t you try some soft cheese - perhaps some gruyère, - and Marie’s cakes are simply divine!” She continued chatter on about the various foods in gentled and welcoming tones. Her eyes, however, remained too wide.

“And of course you’ll take coffee!” She said with a bright, but pale-lipped smile.

I found a fine cup steaming with dark liquid pressed into my hands.

Elizabeth’s soothing chatter died as I was seated, leaving us to begin the meal in silence and stolen glances: mine in an attempt to ascertain their manners, theirs of mingled fear, disgust, and curiosity. Hunger pains clenched my stomach, and I longed to devour everything on my plate in a few swallows, but I dared not satisfy my desires and lead Victor’s family to believe I was the savage I appeared. With what tedious and exhausting care I mimicked the family, painstakingly mincing my food with the too-small utensils and carefully lifting impaled bits to my mouth, then endeavoring to chew as silently as I might, it is hardly possible to relate.

Alphonse strove to lift the pall of silence by regaling me with tales of his dear family’s recent outing to the Plainpalais: the beautiful weather in the midst of winter, the general enjoyment, and the various adventures and escapades of his darling William.

Henry and Elizabeth joined in with merry laughter or witty asides, endeavoring all together to set me at ease with charming and lively vivacity. However, this attempt did nothing to sooth my spirits, for the family themselves still regarded me with veiled fear. The very air was thick with it! Smiles and laughter filled a sunlit room full of beautiful gilded things and the finest of food. I might have sunk into the joyous atmosphere with bliss. But it was a cruel lie. I could never belong here – could never share in this beauty – that knowledge crushed the very air from my lungs. I longed to flee to a world that I understood, to the desolate places where no man trod. But no one had the courage to break the awful farce: the lie that I could be like them.   

The odours wafting up from my plate began to sicken me. I twisted my fingers in the napkin I had been given, until I realized, horrified, that I had torn it. My tattered, stained, and dirt-splattered garments and the bare and broken skin of my feet dirtying the ornate rug beneath them made a rude contrast to these beings of light and beauty. My knife began to chatter against my plate – my fingers were shaking. I hid my hands in my lap.

At last, the tedious charade came to an end and Victor’s father broached the subject which all of them truly wanted to wring from me. 

“We are all indebted to you, kind sir, for the return of our dear Victor,” he began.

“Your arrival was…striking.” He smiled, endeavoring, I think, to hide his suspicion. “Please, indulge an old man’s worry for his boy. How did Victor come to this sad state? When did you make his acquaintance? Have you travelled from Ingolstadt on foot?”

 I could tell he had many more questions, but restrained himself.

“It was in the pursuit of bettering me that your dear Victor drove himself to such a state,” I lied.

“…Bettering you?” Clerval asked, hard skeptical eyes belying his cheerful smile.

“Yes. You can see for yourselves my unnatural size and the deformities of my visage – all this was compounded by a childhood accident which left me severely burned. All men hate the wretched – so I have received, for the better portion of my life, nothing but scorn from my fellow men. However, at Ingolstadt I chanced to encounter your son, and he saw in my condition not something to hate, but something which might be improved.”

I saw the family was moved by my tale, regarding me not as a thinly tolerated beast, but at last, as a man. Victor’s bride looked upon me with liquid eyes and a trembling about her mouth. The hardness had gone from Clerval’s eyes. Monsieur Frankenstein looked extremely proud of his son’s imagined compassion. My breath came easier. I dropped my stiffened shoulders, sitting back in my chair.

“Victor became fixed on his plan to help me – indeed, he was so compelled to aide me that he dropped his other studies at Ingolstadt,” I related.

“His studies!” Elizabeth exclaimed.

“That dream was so dear to him…” murmured Clerval.

“What could have so wholly consumed him?” Exclaimed Alphonse, alarmed.

The whole family leaned forward to hear my answer, eyes bright with concern.

“Victor contrived to replace my hideously burned skin with new skin,” said I, imbuing my voice with false wonder and reverence. I spread my hands that they might inspect the raised and purpled scars wrapping about both wrists, and the one running up the underside of my right arm.

They stared at me with pale and sickened faces.

“But those scars… you are covered,” Elizabeth’s voice broke. She covered her mouth with a shaking hand.

My stomach sank, breaths constricting.

“New!” Clerval whispered, “No… what death-like pallour.”

“Oh Henry!” Burst Elizabeth in horrified reproach. All the color leeched from her cheeks; she looked as if she might faint.

“I’m sorry Uncle, I must – I must look in on Victor!” She gathered up her skirts and fled.

Alphonse’s eyes roamed over my monstrous patchwork hide, cutting into my flesh like one of Victor’s knives. I flinched away.

“Victor was very kind,” I mumbled, dry throat working.

No! They had granted me their compassion - had seen me as a man! But now... Still, I tried feebly to justify myself, to regain what I had shattered.

“I did not know how else to help Victor, so I brought him here…” My throat closed, and sweat dripped down my back.

My own heartbeat and every ringing curse which had been called down on my head thundered in my ears:

“Murderer!”

“Wretch!”

“Monster!”

“You must die!”

Panting, I cast panicked eyes on Clerval, and Victor’s father, but their mouths remained closed in mute revulsion. A chill wracked me. I grasped for my cup, raising it to my lips, but it fell from numb fingers to foul the brilliant white table linens. These cruel hands had once again ruined the lovely - how I hated them! I clenched scalded fingers. Clerval and Monsieur Frankenstein were rising, reaching for me – my vision was clouded, but I was sure their eyes burned with scorn.

With a cry, I sprang up from the table and flew from the room. The house blurred about me, my heaving gasps drawing no air. I burst outside, my feet pounding on damp soil through the confused outlines of trees. I stumbled, shaking knees giving out beside a deep pool. My stomach roiled and something burned up the back of my throat. I wretched, spitting a thin stream of bile on the mossy ground.

“I am Adam,” I hissed through chattering teeth.  “I am not a monster. He named me.” I swallowed down the taste of bile.

“I am a man. I am like them.”

“I am.”

“Adam,” I repeated, settling between the roots of a great tree.

I stared up the indistinct shapes and colors waving above my head until they gradually resolved themselves into swaying branches. I began to distinguish sweet birdsong above my heaving breaths and pounding heart. I lay back between two gnarled roots of the mighty tree, and endeavored to listen with my whole being to the singing birds. My fingers found a knot on the root beside me, and I traced its edges over and over, trying to think no thoughts, but only be.

Spent and sick at heart, I slept. 

The setting sunlight fell across my eyes and unhappily, I awoke, slumped between the tree roots. Slowly, I sat, shoulders pulling and twinging. My fingers throbbed with cold and I brought them to my mouth and blew on them. The sun was dipping behind Mt. Jura; still it shone on the treetops and the foothills, but it no longer reached me. A chill wing sprang up, rattling the branches above my head and sending dried leaves tumbling onto the surface of the pool beside me. I caught a glimpse of my distorted visage in its depths and shuddered, my spirits sinking into a deep and still despair. I was a fool to think I merited anything other than scorn and fear from those who I had once so deeply wronged. I had allowed my passions to rise up to the sun, but like Icarus, they had been drowned.

I resolved to quit the house of Frankenstein, making my dwelling in the wilds and wilderness about Geneva until such time as Victor awoke and I might seek him out. My satchel still waited in my abandoned chamber, containing The Republic, Victor’s book of poetry, and his journal, as well as a map of the country, a small knife, and all I could find of Victor’s money. But I had not the heart to retrieve it.

I stood, looking towards the sun’s dying rays and the house where my frail creator lay, then turned my steps to the fastness of the wild, thence to make my solitary way. 

Chapter Text

Cool fingers carded through my hair, the gentle sensation pulling me from blackness. I shifted into the touch, hearing a woman’s voice close to my ear. Elizabeth! How I longed to take her in my arms! But I hardly had the strength to blink open heavy eyes.

My beloved Elizabeth sat tucked against my side, reading quietly from a pocket-sized book. Her hair, longer than I remembered, fell over her shoulder in a braid. The dark strands glinted in the light of a near-by candle and I longed to finger the plaits. She had grown even more beautiful, her deep eyes catching the light and seeming almost to glow. She wore a plain white dress, a night shift, I think, but to me, no one could not have appeared more lovely – an angel.

Her head began to droop toward the pages of her book – it must be late. Presently she started awake again. Then she was looking into my eyes.

“Victor!” She leaned close.

I smiled.

“It’s good to see you,” she said, with a wavering smile of her own.

I leant up and kissed her lips tenderly.

“I missed you too,” she murmured, and began to cry.

I endeavored to comfort her, but all I could manage was a miserable croak.

“Oh Victor, these are not tears of sorrow,” she soothed.

I found her hand and clasped it, exhaustion rising up to claim me again.

When I next awoke, my dear father and Henry sat beside me, speaking in quiet undertones. Delighted, I attempted to greet them, but my lungs spasmed in a fit of coughing. I curled in on myself, feeling warm hands pulling at my shoulders.

“Victor, you’re alright,” I heard my father say.

“Here, lie back,” said Clerval’s voice, and I was settled back against him.

A cup was pressed to my lips, and I swallowed the cold water gratefully, Henry’s hands supporting my shoulders.

Father’s worried face appeared above me, and I tried to reassure him with a smile before weary sleep dragged me under.

When next I opened my eyes, it was to morning sunlight streaming through tall windows into a bright and cluttered bedchamber. I beheld with wonder the towering book cases, the familiar white armoire, and, tangled by my feet, a woven blanket which had been mine since boyhood. Geneva – home!

Adam been true to his promise.

I settled deeper into my bed, feeling well-known lumps under my spine. My eyes drifted closed, and I lay awash in fond memories of this house and the ones I loved, warm as the sun’s rays falling over my legs. My mind turned briefly to my failed creation and where he might be, but even this contemplation could not snuff out the deep joy that suffused my spirits.

A babble of voices drew near, and I struggled to sit up. The door flew open with a rattling crash, and a warm weight suddenly sprawled across me, all the air rushing from my lungs in a pained groan. Blond curls filled my vision, and bony limbs dug into me.

“William!” Justine’s familiar voice scolded. “Get off your brother at once!”

“Victor!” William drew back long enough to reveal his blue eyes, bright with excitement, before he clutched me in an embrace that was somehow all elbows and knees, whilst his chin dug into my collarbone.

“It’s good to see you too, little brother,” I replied, faint.

“Say, Victor, where do thoughts come from? And what is light made of? Justine and everyone says you know things, and no one else will tell me,” he prattled, bouncing up and down on my ribs, then migrating to my stomach.

I shoved weakly, and obligingly, he slid off, placing all his weight on my arm, legs still draped over me.

My dearest Elizabeth swooped in to save me, saying, “Now William, you must give Victor a little more room. He is feeling poorly.”

He did not seem to hear her, kicking his legs a little and saying to me, “Well?”

Father stooped and lifted him off me with a strong remonstrance, but his eyes twinkled. William slipped from his grasp and darted back to my side, watching me with inquisitive blue eyes. He was so much taller than when I had left for Ingolstadt.

“Alright, Victor?” Henry laughed. He was slouched against the doorframe, lifting not a finger to help.

I attempted a scowl at him, but soon cracked into a grin. I lifted a hand and ruffled William’s hair, a quiet laugh spilling from me.

“William, if you come along now, I’ll play a good long game of hide and seek with you,” Justine said, making her own bid to give me peace. I loved her for it.

“Huzzah!” the boy shouted, darting towards the door.

Whirling around to me, he cried, “You will tell me, won’t you Victor? Why –?”

“Oh leave the man in peace!” Justine chivvied him out of the room.

“When you come back, I’ll have an answer,” I promised, as he peeked around the doorframe at me. My family’s quiet chatter blurred into indistinct murmurs, and I fell asleep.

I awoke some hours later, finding myself strong enough to sit up. My father still sat by my bedside and his presence greatly cheered me: he passed pleasant hours regaling me with news of family friends and antidotes concerning my dear family, especially clever little William. But more delightful to me than the stories he told was the sound of his voice, the lines about his eyes as he smiled, and his steady laugh – all beloved and forgotten things. With a tranquil heart, I watched the shadows’ slow roll across my wall, high noon thickening into rich afternoon light.

At length, my father patted my leg and left me. Elizabeth had abandoned her book of poetry on my night stand, and I began to idly perused the collection of poems. Footsteps approached and I looked up.

Henry stood in the door, beaming. “My dear Frankenstein,” he exclaimed.

“Henry!” I grinned.

He had grown taller and broader about the shoulders in the two years I had been away, and looked as if he had spent happy hours rambling under the sun: his hair was bright and golden at the roots, and the freckles stood out on his merry face.

“It’s been too long,” I said.

“Well I’ve been fighting Elizabeth for the privilege of staring at your sleeping face for nearly two weeks.  It’s good to see you awake. Do you know, Victor, I had nearly persuaded my father to let me join you at Ingolstadt?”

“But your father hates study!” I laughed.

“He was on the point of agreeing, for my sake, I think. But now you’ve come to Geneva instead!” He strode across the room and dropped gracelessly into the chair my father had vacated. “Just couldn’t wait to see me, hm?”

“You know me, Henry. No one at Ingolstadt was forever telling me I’m reading the wrong sort of books, or dragging me off for a good ramble in the mountains. For the record, I still think Coleridge far superior to Wordsworth.”

“How can you– Coleridge! Victor, you’ve got no soul!”

We slipped into old banter and pleasant arguments. Henry’s presence, his quick laugh and noble heart, filled me with love for him and for my dear family. How deeply had I missed them!

At length, we lapsed into an easy silence.

Henry’s mirthful face became drawn with solemnity as he swung his legs off my bed.

“Frankenstein… you’ve got a lot to answer for.” His feet hit the floor with a dull thump and he settled forward, elbows on his knees.  

“What do you mean, Henry?” I gave a false smile, spirits sinking under the weight of my deceptions.

“Who was the man who brought you home, Victor?”

I dropped my eyes. “He’s a friend.”

Clerval merely quirked an eyebrow.

“Why does it matter, Henry? He’s helped me a great deal,” I said sharply.

“Helped you?” Henry nearly sprang from his chair.

“Victor, you must’ve been sick for at least a month – no – months! You arrived without any kind of – of luggage or any of your things. Why, not so much as a pocket handkerchief!” He threw up his hands. “Have you left them all in Ingolstadt?”

Clerval began pacing about my bed.

“Apparently – couldn’t you find the time to write us at all?” he said, turning away from me to stare out the window.

“I was –”

“Occupied?” He demanded. “It’s been two years, Frankenstein!”

“And your apartment,” Clerval dragged a hand through his hair. “Your landlords sent notice saying its been burnt to the ground!” He was growing louder. “You come home, finally, and you’re accompanied by some stranger!”

He stared intently into my face, lips pinched. “Victor, something about that man is…not natural.”

I matched his gaze and was silent.

At last, he slumped back into the chair, looking weary. “Look here, if you’ve gotten yourself into any kind of nasty scrape, you needn’t face it alone.” He took my hand and pressed it.

Faintly I said, “I’m quite alright.” I was overcome by guilt.

Unable to meet his eye, I looked for a distraction.

“Adam has not come in since I’ve awoken – where is he?” I asked.

“He’s gone, Victor. Fled. We haven’t any word of him.”

“What happened?” I demanded, stiffening in alarm.

“Who is he, Frankenstein?”

“He wouldn’t…leave. Clerval, what did you do?”

“…He told us his story and it…disquieted us. He perceived that we were troubled, and, greatly agitated, he ran.”

“Oh Adam,” I muttered to my hands. “His story?” I asked at length, lifting my head, “What did he say?”

 “His story? No. Let me hear yours,” Clerval said, stern-faced.  

 “I – he is my patient. From Ingolstadt,” I began. I had never lied to Henry before, and the words formed a bitter weight on my tongue. “He has a rare condition – pemphigus or ichthyosis, perhaps. I sought to stu – to help him.” The truth, however, was heavier.

“I developed an elixir –”

“An elixir? That was your only cure?” Clerval watched me with his dark blue eyes.

“…Yes. You see, mercury, heated to the right temperature and mixed with distilled vinegar and a little of the juice of the peach blossom…”

One look at Henry’s face stopped my mouth. He did not believe me. I opened my lips, desperate to prove I was still the man he thought me to be.

“Stop,” he said.

“Stop what?” I asked lightly. I could feel the color draining from my face.

“Lying,” he said, flat. “I know you, Victor.”

“That’s not – I wasn’t – I’ve never –”

“Lied to me?” Clerval said, holding up a familiar leather-bound journal.

“Victor, what did you do at Ingolstadt?” he asked.

“My journal!” I cried, making a snatch at it. Henry held it aloft.

“Give it here!” I struggled from under my bedclothes.

“How much have you read?” I demanded, filled with dread.

That journal overflowed with damning evidence – I had mapped out my whole plan for my creation, sketching him in varying stages of completion many times over on those pages, pouring out my heart and my fevered ambitions.

Henry must not have it.

“How much?” I snarled.

Gaining my feet at last, I made another wild grab for my journal. He stood his ground.

“He’s not your patient at all, is he?” Henry clenched that hated journal in his fist, and his eyes flashed.

 “Give it to me, Clerval!” I flung myself at him, furious.

He captured my wrist in a painful grip. I gritted my teeth and shoved against him, but he was unmoving.

“Victor!” He cried, “What is this madness?”

“I am not mad!” I roared.

Henry stared, disgust flashing across his features. I hated him for it – that look – it tore at something at me, breaking and breaking, until I realized – I had deserved it. All at once, anger and strength fled, leaving me wretched. I stumbled back, sagging against the old armoire.   

“Oh Henry… I’m…” I wanted to ask his forgiveness, but the words wouldn’t come.

“I’ve – there’s something… If you read that journal, you’d know…”

“Know what, Victor?”

“What a wretch I’ve become.”

The few steps to my bed seemed impossible. I closed my eyes.

“Come on.” Henry was suddenly beside me. 

His arm wrapped about my shoulders, bracing me against his side. Clerval all but dragged me back to bed, and sweating, let me fall onto it. 

“Damnit Victor,” he said, dropping into the chair.

“Listen. You can… have this.” He pressed the journal into my hands.  “I’ll not touch it again. Just,” he sighed, “tell me what I need to know, when you can.” He gave a faint smile.

“I promise, Henry,” I said, deeply grateful.

“Now, let’s no more of this!” He cuffed my shoulder. 

“Elizabeth certainly spent quite a long time with you. I do believe she was blushing when I passed her in the halls,” Henry grinned sharply.

“Clerval!”

I raised a hand to swat at him just as Elizabeth burst in, dark and disheveled hair flying behind her.

“Is William with you?” She cried. 

“I’m afraid I haven’t –”

“Oh God.” She buried her face in her hands.

“Justine says he was playing in the woods and – and he’s run off.”

She lifted her tear-stained face and dashed forward to seize my hands.

“Victor! We can’t find him anywhere!”

I passed weary days wandering the environs near the estate of the Frankensteins, ranging beyond Geneva to the foothills of the majestic Mount Jura – but no matter how far my feet travelled, I could not forget the miserable scene I had fled, nor my frail creator, and these things, more than the bleak forest, the rain-dropping branches, and the dank earth, weighed down my spirits.

 Sometimes the old bitter rage scorched my heart – the scornful eyes of Victor’s family tormenting me and driving me nearly to gnash my teeth. Sometimes deep-rooted despair sapped my strength, and I sank to the ground wherever I found myself and let winter’s grip creep into my frame.

I rambled through long yellowed grass, flattened under snow, and, passing through silent pine groves and rustling stands of oaks, wondered at their browning and lifeless leaves, still clinging and refusing to fall. Streams ran down from the mountains, ice crackling over the still stretches, and merry water rushing in other places over the rocks. The frigid water numbed my lips and chilled me from within.

I began to be desperately hungry, the few withered berries or worm-eaten acorns I scavenged not enough to stave off the pangs of hunger. Daring to steal closer to Geneva, I snatched food from outlying huts and hovels.

Nearly a fortnight had passed since I fled the Frankensteins. I crept from under the low-hanging branches of a great pine, where I had slept for a few fitful hours during the day, and set out to assuage my hunger. Patches of melting snow reflected the sky’s deepening purple, the clouds of my breath still faintly luminescent in the dying light.

Branches snapped under my feet as I picked my way through the underbrush. The ground dropped away into a dim hollow on my left, the sound of running water rising up from the depths. I turned aside to look for firewood, when a snatch of light blue fabric several yards below me caught my eye – curious.

 I scrambled and slipped down the muddy embankment, perceiving a figure! A small unmoving body lay slumped against a fallen log, limbs jumbled. It was a boy child of about nine or ten years. His fine blue coat and his breeches were dirt-streaked and torn, and his pale and curling hair dark with mud.

Dread flashed through me at the sight of that crumpled form. The very air seemed charged with unquiet.

“Leave him, he is beyond help,” I told myself.

Yet I pushed forward on stumbling feet, and stooping, peered into the boy’s face. My blood turned to ice.

It was William Frankenstein!

I drew back with a cry, horror seizing me. The darling child lay broken at my feet, just as he had lain after I crushed the life from his throat in the nightmarish past. I reached out a trembling hand to his pale neck. A pulse! Weak, but steady. The boy lived. I sank to my knees, profound relief rushing through me.

But how had this child come to be here, far from home, and companionless? And how long had he lain unmoving in the gathering dark?

“William?” I rolled him onto his back. He sagged, head slumping back against my arm, curls awfully slick with – blood. It was blood.

“No.”

I pressed a hand to his cheek. His skin felt chilled and clammy. In the dim light, his face was white and colorless – corpse-like. Something dark and slick coated my fingers. I began to tremble, wild panic rising up in my breast. No. No! His blood again stained these miserable hands! The boy must not die this time. Victor must not suffer so, and this innocent, why should he be destroyed?

I probed the back of his head, frantic fingers combing through strands tangled with congealed blood, until I found the place where it still issued, sluggish. I could not see the extent of the wound, and had nothing to bind it up with. The child must be saved, but I – I had not the skill to do it. The Frankensteins!

I lifted William into my arms as gently as I might, remembering how easily his flesh had given under my fingers, and terrified I might harm him again. I leapt up the embankment, and dashed through the dim forest, brambles catching my unheeding legs and dark roots rising up to trip me.

The distant lights of Geneva flashed through the trees. I stilled my mad rush. Geneva. William’s home was still several miles distant. Surely in such a city, there must be a doctor. Perhaps I ought… No, I had not the strength to face the barbarity of man again. But the boy must live.

I ran towards the lights.

My feet pounded on cobbled stones and I halted in a brightly lit square, drawing deep breaths that jostled the small body in my arms.

“Please,” I cried. “The boy needs help!”

I lifted William’s disheveled form.

My cry drew the eyes of all in the square: fashionable ladies screamed and swooned, dandy gentlemen shouted. A portly old servant collapsed in the street. Above me, windows slammed open, pale faces peering out.

“Who is –”

“Some kind of –”

“Demon!” Confused voices clamored around me.

I took a half-step towards a woman with kindly wrinkles, beginning to entreat her, but she pressed back against a wall, terror-stricken.

Something hit me across the shoulders. I whirled, seeing an elderly well-dressed man raising his cane again, scowl on his face, knees quaking.

“Leave us, Fiend!” He shouted.

“Please, a doctor!” I struggled to make myself heard over the rising tumult.

 The square grew packed with onlookers, a whirl of torchlit faces full of fear and rage and revulsion.

The old man’s strike caught the crowd as tinder ignites dry wood, the shifting muttering masses now beginning to seethe with fury. The mass of men surged against me, pelting me with whatever came to hand: a rock struck me in the side, a lady’s shoe bounding off my shoulder. Their screams and shouts beat against my ears like the tide, merciless and seeking to drag me under. A pounding began in my temples. Fear began to gnaw at me; these people wanted me dead.

Run. Run, my mind said.

But the boy lay still in my arms.

“Stop!” I roared.

The crowd pressed back, some paling, some beginning to tremble.

“Please, the child –”

Something struck me full across the mouth. I staggered, tasting blood. The clamoring mob surged forward to swallow me, blows raining on me from all sides.

I desperately tried to shelter William, and looking down, met terrified blue eyes. The boy opened his mouth and screamed.

“Help!” he shrieked. “Help!”

His shrill terror pierced through the clamor like a knife. Gasps rippled through the sea of faces, new horror and rage manifesting. The crowd milled in chaos, some pushing forward, others drawing back in fear and confusion.

“Give me the child!” someone cried.

“That wretch has got a –”

“Poor babe!”

“He’s going to eat me!” William wailed, struggling furiously.

I tried desperately not to drop him, to make myself a shield against the mob’s wrath and keep him from being struck.

“Be still, child,” I entreated. “I will not harm you.”

“Demon! Ogre! Save me!” the boy screamed, straining out of my grip and reaching out a hand.

“Isn’t that Frankenstein’s son?”

An awful crack. William’s shrill cry set my teeth on edge. A forceful blow meant for me had caught the boy’s wrist.

I flinched as if the blow had landed true. Could men be so cruel? They hated and feared me, but surely that wrath could not spill over onto William. The child ought to move even a wretch’s deepest compassion, yet someone had struck the boy. Hot anger pulsed through me.

The screams and cries, the rage-filled shouts and the faces twisted in scorn, the flickering torchlight, and the ceaseless rain of blows battered my senses, dashing my thoughts to pieces and knocking the breath from my lungs. Wild hatred seized me, rage at the injustice of man possessing me once more – I brought my hand down, seizing a man by the hair and lifting him up. His shouts turned to screams, and I hurled him down. He landed with a crack and lay unmoving on the cobblestones.

William had curled in on himself, cradling his wrist.

“Let me go,” he sobbed into the silence.

The sound wounded me more deeply than any blow. Was I forever damned to cause him suffering? I felt sick. This innocent child ought to know nothing but men’s kindness, yet because of me, every instinct of compassion towards the boy had been swallowed in ruthless savagery. I knew only that I must protect the slight, miserable weight cradled in my arms. But I had damned us both with my own savagery: I had cast myself as a monster.

The man had not stirred, and for one moment, neither did anyone else. I searched frantically for a way out, spotting at last a dim alley on the other side of the square.

I lowered my shoulder and shoved through the throng, using my bulk to force aside grasping hands and beating sticks. A large wagon sat next to the alley’s mouth – good. A red-faced rustic drove his walking stick into my side and I snarled, throwing him aside. I was now in the middle of the square. An echoing boom made my ears ring, and then my shoulder was throbbing with hot agony.

Oh hell. I had been shot.

My arm began to ache and pulse, wet and heavy. William nearly tumbled from my grasp as I lurched. I gritted my teeth and heaved, parting the mob with frenzied steps.

At last, I reached the mouth of the alley, letting William tumble against one crooked wall. I turned, blocking as much of the entrance as I might.

“The wagon!”

“He means to block up the –”

“– barricade himself!”

“Stop him!”

I seized the wagon with my good hand, and planting my feet, began to drag with all the strength I had. One of the braver men darted past me.

I turned round to face him, endeavoring to plead, “You must help –”

Trembling, he raised a gun.

“Wait –”

Hot pain pierced my thigh. I smelled blood and my leg trembled under my weight. I cried out, and the man fled.

Clenching my teeth, I clutched the wagon and hauled myself to my feet, flinching as my weight rested on the wounded leg. With a roar, I shoved the cart with all my strength, blocking the entrance. I drove my heel against the wooden wheels until, cracking and creaking, the wagon listed over and settled, immobile.

I sank to the ground, breaths coming in heaves and groans. My teeth began to chatter. I writhed.

William was still sobbing.

I struggled to sit upright, leaning my back against the boards and letting my head fall against the wagon planks.

“William.”

The sobbing stopped.

“Peace, child.”

William shrank away from me, rubbing a hand across his eyes and huddling against the wall. My heart sank – the boy was terrified of me. I let my eyes slip closed. My head throbbed, the hot pulsing pain of my wounds making my throat tighten and stomach clench. I forced my eyes open, needing to think of anything but the pain; I looked to the stars, but they were dim.

“Frankenstein,” I said. “You must go out to them.”

William trembled, recoiling further.

“Please, you will be safe there. You need a doctor.”

He just stared.

“Go!” I cried. “Go or – I’ll eat you!” I made to reach for the boy, but dropped back with a pained hiss.

“…you won’t,” he said.

Something like a chuckle built in my throat, and I laughed until I lost my breath.

“You are very right, small one.” I closed my eyes again, clamping a hand over the hole in my shoulder. It grew rapidly slick and warm.

“Go, boy,” I said again.

“…I can’t.”

“What…?”

“My – my foot hurts. I can’t stand.” His voice wobbled.

“Come here.” I gentled my voice as well as I could.

He approached in timid increments.

“Let me see.” By the faint light, I perceived that the child’s ankle was swollen and dark.

With a low groan, I pulled my shirt over my head, fingers fumbling. That small exertion taxed me greatly. Methodically, I ripped the loosely woven fabric into strips.

“Let me wrap it. It will ease the pain.”

 Gently, I lifted his foot and began to bind the swollen ankle. I kept my eyes on my task, feeling William’s stare, and how stiffly he held his leg. His bones felt fragile and bird-like under my fingers. He relaxed fractionally as I worked. I tied off two ends of the cloth in a knot. Shoddy, but it was the best I could manage. He did not retreat, watching me with wide eyes.

“Well then, off you go.” I said, attempting a smile.

I sank back, a deep chill pervading me as the world began to blur sickeningly.

 “…I don’t want to,” William said, rubbing his purpling wrist. Behind me, the wagon shivered as men began to splinter and pull apart the far wall.

“They frighten me,” he pressed against my side.

I stilled in shock. This beautiful child clung to a monster and hid from his own kind. These hands had once clutched his tender throat and silenced him forever – he ought to fear me more than any other. Yet he sat shivering against my side. I choked back a sob. 

“Wouldn’t you – you belong out there. With people who are like you.”

“There’re not like me at all! They are angry and – they hurt people…” A shiver passed through his small form.

He believed I could protect him, but I had not the strength to save him from the fury that was pounding down our shelter. The boy would be safer away from me, but I had not the heart nor the strength to drive him away. I could feel my life-blood leaving me with each pulse.

At length, I let my arm settle over his small frame, grateful for his warmth.

I was going to die in this dim alley. I longed to see Victor again, to tell him – I knew not what. I had a wild hope that I might live – a good life this time. And yet. I had lived scarcely two pain-fraught months, but I was not alone. Victor had looked on me with sympathy – with compassion. In all my wretched years I had ceased even to dream of such before. Victor yet drew breath, and so did his beloved family. There was no blood on my hands. I was not the fallen angel, I was Adam.

It was enough.

We did not speak again for quite some time, listening to the shouts and the splintering of wood.

“William,” I said, “There’s something I need you to tell your brother.”

“What? My brother –”

“Promise me. Tell Victor.”

He shifted beneath my arm, peering up with a pale-faced and solemn concern. “I promise.”

“Tell him I never meant for you to be hurt, William.”

“You didn’t –!” I looked earnestly into his eyes.

“And tell him… he gave me more than I ever deserved, and I will die grateful for it.”

“You won’t die! You won’t!” William protested violently. His words came to me as if from a great distance. “I’ll – I’ll tell papa! And Victor! He can do something!”

I tucked him against my side, the only comfort I could offer, and fell back, shivers wracking my frame. My eyes dropped closed.

Chapter Text

Elizabeth began to tremble, and Victor drew her into his arms. He looked at me, anguished, over her dark hair.

"Elizabeth, has Victor –"

Monsieur Frankenstein had burst in, but seeing Elizabeth huddled against Victor, and his son's troubled countenance, he stopped at once.

Black gloom descended on us all. The wild longing to break the spell – speak some word of comfort, or rush off to save William myself – rose in me so strongly that it seemed crush my lungs, yet my hands hung slack at my side, and my lips remained unparted.

With a hurried knock, Justine entered, and with her, a spark. "Someone's just come from Geneva! They've found William!"

"They've found him?" Elizabeth raised her head.

"Where is my son?" cried Victor's father.

Justine only shook her head, ushering in a mud-splattered and breathless workman.

"The child is in Geneva. Some sort of – demon – has got him!"

I shot a dismayed glance at Victor, a black premonition seeping through my mind like spilled ink.

"What do you mean?" said Monsieur Frankenstein.

“Its shape is that of a man, but the thing is huge, and it looks…dead." He shuddered. "We've shot the fiend twice, but he's barricaded himself with your son."

"But William! What could he want with our darling child?" Elizabeth's question rose over the mounting clamor. She wrung her hands.

"We cannot make out what that beast wants – if it's said anything I never heard it. But the boy is hurt."

Those words silenced us all.

"It's Adam," I said at last. "Isn't it, Victor?"

He met my stare, paling rapidly.

"My God." Monsieur Frankenstein sank into a chair.

"No! That cannot be!" Elizabeth started away from her dear Victor's side. He seemed hardly to hear her, looking miserably at his hands and making no defense.

"That man! But he has no reason to hurt –" Justine began.

"Why, Frankenstein?" I asked.

"Why, my poor William?" Monsieur Frankenstein cried out.

"Victor please! Why is this happening?" Elizabeth sobbed.

With each question, Victor flinched, hunching in on himself as if struck. He grew deathly pale and began to breath hard as though he might faint.

Elizabeth stretched out entreating hands to him and he sprang away from her, stumbling from his bed with a tormented shout.

Snatching his brace of pistols, he rushed to the door, fastening them on as he went. He shoved aside the messenger, tearing from the room as if hunted by some avenging spirit.

The door slammed, and we were left in astonished silence. Elizabeth sat frozen on the bed, reaching for one already gone. Victor's father dropped his grey head into his hands.

"Oh hell," I muttered, and hurried after my dear friend.

I caught a glimpse of his figure at the end of the passage, nightclothes standing out stark and white in the dim hall, his every movement driven by some strange passion.

I pursued him to the stables, calling out, but he was deaf to me, lost in dread counsels known only to himself. His face was a terrible mask; this was not the Victor I had known. He paused in his frantic pace only once, in the vestibule, where he snatched my greatcoat, and whirling it about his shoulders, hurried out into the night.

I burst from the doors, a rush of cold filling my lungs.

"Victor!" I cried again.

He hurried on, the air seeming to build and crackle about him – the moment before a thunderclap, or the mighty rushing wind which heralds a driving rain.

I threw open the stable doors. By the paltry light of a single lantern, I saw him saddling an old black stallion with sharp motions. The beast had once been a war-horse, and still carried about him a proud air.

I could hear hurried steps beyond the stable doors.

"Victor, what is this madness?" I spread my hands.

He looked up, eyes pale and harsh as lightning, deep smudges underneath them. His hair stood a wild mess of curls above his ashen face, and my red greatcoat hung too large across his narrow shoulders.

Frankenstein set one bare foot in the stirrup and sprung into the saddle.

Elizabeth flew through the doors. Victor started, then stilled, face full of remorse.

"Victor!" I seized the horse's bridle and reached for his arm.

His rigid form slumped, and he turned to me, looking suddenly small amid the mass of red fabric.

"I can't let them hurt him, Henry." He seemed almost to plead with me. "I can't," he said louder, meeting Elizabeth's watery gaze with one of grim resolution.

He seized the lantern, and with a shout, dug bare heels into the old horse's sides. They thundered away through the night, dwindling figures under the cutting stars.

"Oh Henry!" Elizabeth faltered towards me. "What could he have meant?"

Her chin began to tremble and I feared she might become hysterical. I could not endure that sight.

"William is already hurt –"

"He means that damned creature," I growled.

"Please, Henry!" She looked up at me with large red-rimmed eyes. "Bring them back. Bring them both back to me."

She sobbed, and I winced at the sound, useless.

I hurriedly saddled one of the calmer horses, forcing myself to think only of the buckles and straps under my fingers – at last I could busy my hands.

I turned back to Elizabeth, who was trying fruitlessly to wipe away her tears with her hands.

"Come on," I said.

I led my mount out of the stable, Elizabeth following. She looked as if she wanted to speak, to reach out to me, impossibly sorrowful. Impulsively, I pulled her close and pressed a hasty kiss to her forehead.

"Dry your tears." I swung up into the saddle.

Fumbling about, I drew out the pocket handkerchief I always carried on my person, handing it down to her.

She sniffed into it. The sight plunged my spirits in misery.

"I will bring them home. I swear it," I told her, pressing one hand against my heart.

Victor's father hastened out of the house, stopping beside my horse's bridle and passing a heavy woolen cloak up to me. I wrapped it about my shoulders, only now realizing that the winter's chill had sunk into me. Monsieur Frankenstein clasped my arm, giving me a sharp nod, then stepped back to slip an arm around Elizabeth.

I settled into the saddle, drawing a hand along the horse's smooth neck, then spurring him into a gallop. At any other time, flying through the winter's night with the cold air stinging my cheeks and the horse's powerful strides beneath me would have made me reel with ecstatic delight. But Victor's grim face rose before me, and joy was extinguished.

People were screaming. My horse stamped and began to grind his teeth, ears pinned back against his skull. I struggled to appear calm for his sake, while I desperately searched for Victor amidst the writhing mass of movement and inconstant flickering torches. Bodies crowded my poor mount on all sides. A sweaty-faced young dandy pressed against my leg as he moved with the throng, turning a grinning face up to me. I shivered. The crowd was possessed with untamed passions – I caught angry faces, arguing voices, fearful shouts, and far worse, ecstatic laughter.

The throng seethed most viciously on the far side of the square, dashing themselves with hatred against a badly destroyed wagon, some hacking and battering with tools, others tearing the wood with their bare hands. Behind it, the shadows were deeper – it must be an alley…

"Barricaded himself," the messenger had said.

A knot of shouting began to form, at its center – Victor! He stood in his stirrups, cracking his whip over the heads of the mob. Yet only some men heeded him.

With an awful splintering groan the wagon caved. A fierce triumphant shout broke from the throng, rolling back to me like an inverted tide. Victor forced his way through, turning his horse to block the gaping hole. The proud old warhorse reared, unlucky souls stumbling back from his hooves. The crowd receded, and Victor seized this moment to speak. He looked like a god or a general, and I could hear snatches of his ringing voice penetrating the shouts. He might still them for a moment, but even Victor's titanic will could not hold back this seething mass of hatred.

"Idiot, idiot, idiot," I muttered, spurring on my horse.

The crowd would turn on him before he ever reached William or…that man. My horse jerked under me, startling again. Cursing, I dropped to the ground. I hesitated one anguished second, then let go the reigns – with any luck, the beast would flee back to the Frankensteins.

"– has not wronged you!" I heard Victor cry as I drew nearer.

I was frustratingly close to Frankenstein now – I could see the sweat drip down his brow, but the nearer I drew to the eye of the storm, the fiercer howled the tempest.

"Monster!"

"– must die!"

"Move!"

"He hurt that child!"

A pale face peeped out from within the gaping and destroyed wagon – William!

"Please!" The boy said. "Don't hurt him! It's alright, really! He doesn't want to eat me!"

"There, you see? My brother is unharmed!"

"A monster cannot be innocent. Get out of the way!" shouted a broad-shouldered man in front of me.

"That thing has no place but the grave!"

"Please, he is a man – a good man! I swear it. Now let us pass," Frankenstein exclaimed.

He stood before the mob bare foot, still clad in nightclothes and a too-large red coat.

"It's an abomination – why do you defend it, Frankenstein?"

"You are damning an innocent man! Do not do this – don't kill –" Victor shouted, voice breaking.

" – is not human! He must die!" A prim governess shouted alongside a stout merchant.

"Why?" Victor cried, anguished.

"You don't understand, Frankenstein," an elderly gentleman, an acquaintance of Victor's father, stepped forward, setting a hand on his shoulder. "The beast must die or we shall never be safe from its evil."

Around me, people nodded fervently, a murmur of assent rising.

"– never should have been born!" someone shouted.

"No! Damn you!" Victor threw his hand off. Then he straightened.

"Excuse me, Monsieur. We are leaving," Frankenstein caught the old man with his shoulder as he passed, making him stumble.

He strode towards the wall of men. They did not part.

"Move," he growled.

For one moment he stood toe to toe with a stout peasant; then Victor reached for his pistol. The farmer struck him across the jaw and Frankenstein stumbled back.

They fell upon him. Frankenstein struggled furiously, crying out as someone caught him a glancing blow just over the eye.

A terrible roar split the air – rage-choked, inhuman.

We cowered.

Behind Frankenstein's slumped form towered a ghastly figure: man-like, yet not a man. Cruel yellow eyes glared out from darkness. The thing reached for Victor with a huge, corpse-like hand.

My knees trembled, terror pounding through my veins – paralyzing. Move, save him! I bade myself, but my feet remained planted. I watched, stricken, as the monster seized Frankenstein's arm and dragged him to his feet. I could not look away – what could this fiend do but kill my dearest friend?

Victor looked up, meeting the thing's vile eyes.

"Thank you," he said.

It was Adam.

The hairs on my arms still prickled with horror, but in the stillness, I now understood Victor. Adam must be saved. But the man had just damned both himself and his creator in the eyes of the mob.

The people rallied and closed, silent now, and pale.

"Friends," I cried out, "What shall be gained by destroying this man? No one ought to take the life of another. And this man has not hurt us. Ought we not go back to our homes, and to our families with hands unstained?"

A glob of spit splattered on my boot.

It was as if my words evaporated with the mist that rose from my chilled lips. A horrible weight dropped into my stomach: they meant to kill us. And I was helpless to stop it.

Suddenly Frankenstein was beside me. He wiped the blood from his face, appearing stricken, like a convict at the gallows. I pressed my shoulder against his and felt him trembling. There was nothing he could do, but I loved him for trying.

"Please," he said, quiet now. "You are angry at the wrong man."

"This man is guiltless; he bears no guilt for the sin of his existence." Victor drew a deep breath.

"I do.”

"Victor, what are you saying?" I hissed.

“If someone must die for that crime, then let it be me," declared Frankenstein.

A confused murmuration ran through the crowd, those at the front halting, while those behind pressed forward.

"I, Victor Frankenstein, am that man's creator!" Frankenstein shouted, raising his arms. "If someone must atone, let it be me! Me and not him!"

My dear Frankenstein sagged against me, breathing heavily.

It was as if his words had broken a spell. The mob fractured, people descending into muddled and fearful arguments. Beside me, an old woman's wrinkled cheeks grew wet with tears.

"Go home, mother," I said. I felt for my handkerchief, but I had given it to Elizabeth. When I looked up, she was gone.

I looked, and saw that I was surrounded by frightened and confused faces.

"Go home," I said. "Go home."

One by one, they turned and departed, trickling from the square until only a few onlookers remained at a distance.

At last I was still, a numb emptiness beginning to steal over me. Victor's journal had sparked nasty suspicions, but the truth cut like a blade. A heaviness settled between my ribs, a tempest brewing deep within, far off – a summer storm gathering on the peaks of the mountains.

Victor had gone to Adam’s side, diagnosing him with quick hands and heated questions. The sight of it made me sick. Created, Victor said… my hands shook.

But William. The boy must be terrified. I moved past Frankenstein and his creature, to see William crouched within the wagon, peering at his older brother.

"Henry!" He cried, rushing to me and throwing himself against my legs. I nearly stumbled, but managed to remain firm.

After a moment he stepped back, trying to appear as if he weren't crying.

"All right, up you get," I said, hoisting him up to settle against my hip. He wrapped his arms and legs tightly about me, minutely trembling.

"You've been so brave, my lad," I told him, cradling the back of his head.

It was wet. Blood. I gasped.

"I'm alright," he said in a wobbling voice.

"You'll be right as rain once we get you home," I said, for myself and for him.

He sniffed.

I could only press him against me, the weight in my ribs sinking deeper.

A heaviness settled over my limbs and I became aware that my fingers ached from the cold. I wished dearly that I rested in my bed, reading Lyrical Ballads or perhaps Morte de Arthur.

Victor stooped over his creation, who sat slumped against the wrecked old cart. Strips of fabric had been wrapped tightly about the creature's shoulder and thigh; they were already blood-soaked. He breathed quick and shallow, face drawn in lines of weariness and pain. Someone had brought a horse – some mighty beast of burden, nearly as tall as Victor at the withers.

"Adam," Victor said, laying his palm on that yellowed cheek, "you will have to ride by yourself."

"Victor, I –"

"Follow me, and Henry will ride behind you," Frankenstein finished, in tones which denied argument.

"I can't," said the wretch.

"You will have to, Adam," Victor gripped him by the shoulders – both an encouragement and a threat. The creature looked at Frankenstein for a long time.

With a noise of pain, he shifted his weight, struggling to gain his feet. Victor ducked under his good shoulder.

"Up you get," said Victor, breathless.

Unearthly groans issued from blackened lips, setting my teeth on edge – never before had I heard any living thing express such pain. Once, as a boy rambling through the Alps, I discovered a deer, torn by hunting dogs, lying in a hidden hollow as the thick lifeblood ran down her heaving and shivering sides. Adam panted and trembled as she had done, though he tried to stifle it. Victor let out a muffled grunt between clenched teeth as the man's monstrous weight bore him down.

"Henry –!"

I took the horse's reigns and led him over to the shakily standing pair.

"Here, William," I said, settling the boy on his feet. "hold the reigns a moment."

I fetched a crate which had been in the back of the cart – the man would need to stand on something to mount.

Victor and I strained together, and at last the huge creature stood shaking on the crate. He heaved himself into the saddle, slumping low over the horse's neck. Breath came in sobs, and he trembled in every limb. Victor laid a hand on his great knee.

"You've done it," he said, quietly proud.

The old warhorse had remained with us, and now Victor swung into the saddle. I passed William up to his brother, and the child clung to him. Victor pressed a kiss to the top of his head, then tucked the boy against his chest.

My horse nosed my shoulder – the beast had come back! Grateful, I set my foot into the stirrup and mounted.

We rode.

We seemed to gallop through the dark forest for hours, every dull shape and branch the same. Ahead, the dim silhouette of Adam and his horse formed one large mass, lit only by the moon above and further still, the spark of Victor's lantern.

At last, we thundered across the broad lawns of Frankenstein's estate. His father and Elizabeth rushed from within to stand huddled before the wide steps.

Victor cantered up to them, reigning his horse in sharply. Untangling William's limbs from around him and pressing a final kiss to the crown of his head, he passed the nearly-sleeping boy into Elizabeth's arms.

"Why Victor! Yours hands – they are all over blood!" I heard Elizabeth cry as I drew nearer. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

Victor leapt from his horse. "Hm? Oh, it isn't mine."

"Then, William's?" Elizabeth asked tearfully.

"No," said Victor, "his."

Frankenstein's creature appeared, slumped over his horse's neck, long arms trailing, and bandages dark with blood.

"My God," said Victor's father. "I'll send for the doctor."

Victor had turned to me, uttering a terse, "Henry, help me," but hearing this, he faced his Father, crying, "No!"

"Please, Father," he said, "I will tend to him."

Monsieur Frankenstein looked at his son. "And who will tend to you? You are ill, Victor. And you are no doctor. This man is gravely injured! Pray, do not play about with his life."

Victor's lips curled in a black smile. "I shan't be playing – not any longer," he said. "Truly, Father, there is not another soul who can care for this man."

"Please, Victor." Monsieur Frankenstein set a hand on his son's shoulder. "This man is not your responsibility. You have done enough for him. Come inside and rest. In the morning, you'll see that this is folly."

"I am not a madman!" Victor shouted, tearing away from his Father's hold.

The old man stared at him, and Elizabeth shrank against her uncle's side. Victor wilted.

"I'm sorry. It's – I'm afraid I'm rather tired," he said, quiet.

"And that is why you must rest!" Elizabeth entreated him.

"You cannot help this wretched fellow –"

"Father," he snapped, "I am the only one who can."

"What is this strange arrogance, my son?" The aged man impatiently reached for his son. "I will not see you ruin your health over some half-dead stranger, now come inside!"

"I will not!" Victor's eyes flashed. He planted himself before his creature, engulfed in its shadow.

"Adam," he murmured, taking the thing's limp hand. "Adam, come on now." The man groaned, stirring the lank hair that hung over his face.

"Enough of this!" His father cried.

"Oh Victor, why will you not rest?" Elizabeth pleaded.

"I haven't the time," said Frankenstein, turning away and attempting again to stir the unmoving thing atop the horse.

"Clerval, would you be so kind as to send for the doctor?" Victor's Father asked with an air of forced calm.

"You can't!" Victor shouted.

"Clerval, if you please?" said Monsieur Frankenstein in icy tones.

"No – dear Clerval, if ever you cared for me, please!" Victor rushed forward and seized my bridle.

I leaned down to him. "You will have to tell them."

"I can't! Henry – !" He clung to my hands, searching my face.

"There is no other way, Frankenstein."

He fixed me with a wild stare, but I did not relent. At length, he dropped his forehead against my knee.

"You're right, damn you," he muttered, and raised his face. "I'll do it, just –"

"I'll be here," I said.

He let go.

"Father," he said, "my Elizabeth, I must treat this man's wounds because – I made him. He is my creation, the work of my hands."

His fingers clenched about those of his wretched fabrication.

"We know you helped him at Ingolstadt, but made him? You exaggerate."

"You've done enough, Victor," Elizabeth told him.

"No, He is the object of my labors at Ingolstadt. I pieced together his frame from inanimate matter, and infused into him the spark of life. His anatomy is not…regular."

Victor's family beheld the outcome of their son's toils in mute horror. He stood before them awaiting their judgement. There was only a terrible silence. It burned him. He grew pale, and at last cried out.

"Oh, I am a wretch, it is true! I have pried into and profaned that which was not meant for men! Condemn me for it! But Adam has done nothing. Despise me if you will, but if you impede me now, I will sin against him again. Please, I cannot let him die!" Frankenstein sank to the ground and waited.

Elizabeth approached, silent and tearful. She knelt and embraced him, shoulders trembling.

"My Elizabeth," he murmured into her hair, voice choked.

"I do not know what to make of you, dear Victor, but I could never despise you," she said.

Monsieur Frankenstein's face was unreadable. "You had better get started," he said.

Chapter Text

I entered unnoticed upon a scene of terror. Victor stooped over a sturdy table, upon which lay a monstrous figure. Its shape was that of a man, but I saw only a wounded beast. Its purpled feet stretched off the table, twitching and kicking. The thing let out a guttural cry.

Clerval muttered curses as he stood over the massive shoulder, endeavoring vainly to hold the creature steady as its bloodslicked chest heaved for breath. Victor’s face was set in lines of determination, red fingers plucking and gouging at the creature’s wound with wet sounds. A smell of blood hung in the air, sickly sweet.

“Elizabeth!” Dismayed, Henry shifted, endeavoring to block my view. “You oughtn’t to see this.”

Victor at last looked up.

“Please, my dearest Elizabeth,” he attempted a smile – only a twitch of the lips, “do not dirty yourself by staying at my side. I ask only a few hours and then Adam will – it will be over.”

A bought of coughs shook Victor. I hurried to his side.

“Don’t!” Victor cried, reaching out a bloodied hand.

I did not understand his terror. Gently I took his fingers, though he tried to pull them away.

“I will stay,” I said. “My Victor, you are here, so I will be too.”

His brow contracted with worry, and he opened his mouth. But the figure on the bed made a low noise of pain, and Victor turned back to him sharply – only to pause, gripping the table’s edge and breathing deeply as he struggled not to cough again.

I averted my eyes from Victor’s bloody hands and fevered cheeks, only to be confronted with the true monstrosity of the thing he had created. I told myself to look away, yet my gaze continually reverted to the monstrous body on the table.

Stripped as he was for the surgery, I saw that scars littered the creature’s whole frame. A deep puckered line of silver began at his clavicle and disappeared under the covering about his waist. Fine purpled marks closed round his arms and dotted his torso. A slim scar circled the little finger of his right hand. His skin was pallid in some places, yet mottled and yellow in others. I ought, perhaps, to have been embarrassed to see him thus uncovered, but I felt only a kind of mute horror, as if looking on a desecrated corpse. Yet he breathed.

I rubbed my arms, uneasy. I longed to flee, to shut the groans and the stench and the knowledge of what that man I loved had done behind the door. But my promise held me at Victor’s side.  

A prickle of trepidation overcame my senses.

It was watching me. 

Even the eyes were strange: watery and yellowed – inhuman.

The expression in their depths, pain-weary and full of longing… William’s eyes had held the same look as I had laid the poor lad in his bed and run a hand over his hair. It was afraid. Adam was afraid.

I stepped back from Victor, who bent over his creature’s shoulder. The man’s huge hand twitched and contracted on the table before me. I reached out and slipped my much smaller one within his grasp. He stared at me with a stormy countenance, yet something like hope flickered deep in his eyes. He returned my touch. I laid my other hand atop the great ridged surface, drawing my thumb across it with a steady motion.

“I’ve brought the spirits – your father’s strongest bottle – I was to be sure to let you know – his strongest. Oh, and the jar of honey, like you asked, Sir, and I’ve brought along the camphor and laudanum from William’s room, though we have…only a…little.” Justine had entered bearing a silver tray.

I was struck for a moment by the ridiculous fancy that she had dropped in to serve tea. But she stood frozen in the doorway, all the color draining from her cheeks as she stared at Adam, all his ugliness laid bare, and at Victor, straining over that huge ruined form and bloody to the elbows.

I pulled the tray from her slack grasp.

“Justine,” I said, “it would bring me a great deal of comfort if you would go and sit with William. I mean to stay with Victor until he is finished.”

She nodded and withdrew, fleeing down the corridor on unsteady feet. 

I settled the tray on my lap, surprised to see my own curved embroidery needle and newest green silk thread.

Victor made a small noise of triumph, slowly withdrawing a metal ball from the wound.

“Here, Henry,” he said, thrusting the bullet in Clerval’s general vicinity.

Henry plucked it from his hand and dropped the ball hastily, expression pinched. The bullet came to rest against my shoe. I stared at the faint trail it had left – blood.

Adam cried out, crushing my fingers in a desperate grip. I bit my lips, muffling a gasp.  Victor had dug his scalpel into Adam’s flesh, lengthening the hole left by the bullet.

“Victor!” I cried, “how could that be anything but cruel?”

He looked up, startled.                                                              

“He is no longer dead flesh for you to experiment on, Frankenstein,” Clerval gritted out.

“What…? The incision? It was quite necessary. You see, I cannot stich up a circle. But if extended, it becomes a line – I’m quite practiced with those…” He trailed off, clearing his throat.

Casting about for a moment, he caught up the needle and thread from the tray I had set beside me. 

“Blast these hands,” Victor muttered. The curved needle seemed to dance in his tremoring grip.

“Let me,” I said, reaching out.

Victor let out a frustrated breath, but dropped the needle into my palm. I threaded it, rolling it in my fingers and letting its familiarity comfort me. Victor’s fingers began to beat an anxious tattoo on the table’s edge, and I returned the needle, reluctant, somehow, to let it go.

A row of neat stitches appeared beneath Victor’s practiced hands, sealing the red fissure as he pierced the flesh and drew my thread through. I could almost imagine the strange and awful scene to be a nightmare, a vision wrought on my mind by an excess of exhaustion and trepidation. The thought of my Victor, stooped with the same feverish gleam, picking precise lines of stitching into the weary hours of the night flashed before me. I felt sick.  

The man, no – Adam – clutched my hand each time the needle stabbed him. My thumb brushed the thick scar which joined wrist to hand. Each ridge of the ruined flesh seemed too real to me, suddenly. My throat tightened and spasmed, but my eyes remained empty.

“Victor…” I began, “Oughtn’t you to consider… that is, it seems you’re causing him –”

“Don’t,” he muttered. “If I think about that I won’t be able to carry on at all.”

Pausing, Victor scrubbed a reddened fist across his eyes and sniffed roughly. He cursed under his breath, clearing his vision with a rumpled handkerchief.

Straightening, he regarded his creation for a moment with unnatural stillness.

Then with a sudden flurry of motion, he exclaimed, “I’ve forgotten to clean it!”

Snatching up the elegant liquor bottle from the tray, he tore off the cork and tipped the bottle over the yawning cut, green liquid splashing into the wound.  

Adam cried out. Victor flinched at the sound.

“Ah, the deuce! Adam, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

He frantically dabbed the wound, handkerchief coming away a muddied brown. Drawing a rattling breath, Victor clenched the gaping flesh together and began again to suture it closed with meticulous stitches.

Adam’s grasp grew pitiless, the knotted flesh clammy against my aching fingers.

“Frankenstein.” The creature went unheard. “Frankenstein…”

“Victor?” He sounded lost.

“Hmm?” Victor lifted his head.

“If I do not…” Adam stopped. “Frankenstein, what if you cannot fix me?”

“Don’t be a fool, Adam,” Victor answered. He coughed. “I’m nearly finished.”

“Frankenstein. I do not fear death.” The creature stared at Victor, his frightful yellow eyes seeming to burn.

“What? There is nothing to fear,” snapped Victor. He drew the thread with a harsh motion, tying a knot with sharp tug. 

“Perhaps I shall not live; I shall find rest in –”

“No!” Victor shouted in a voice like thunder. He slammed his hand on Adam’s great shoulder. Adam gritted his teeth, releasing me as he struggled against his creator.

“Know this – it is enough, what you have done for me.”

“How can you –”

“You must not be angry with yourself, creator, if you cannot keep the life within this flesh –”

“I can!” Victor snatched the jar of honey, flinging the lid aside. Dipping a finger into it, he began roughly to trace over his new row of stitching. “I owe you a debt – do you remember?”

“You promised me your presence. And you are here.” Adam reached up with his left arm, clumsily brushing against Victor, whose hand still covered his wound.

“That is – how can you not demand more?” Victor cried. “No – I owe you the debt of a creator: compassion.” He returned Adam’s grip fervently.  

“Frankenstein, you have paid it.”

Victor wrenched his honey-slicked hand free of Adam’s grasp, but Adam caught his wrist.

“I say you have paid it,” he reiterated in a low but penetrating voice.  

“Certainly not!” Victor exclaimed. “At last I have the strength –” He broke into a harsh cough.  

“So you would drag me through this hell because you must pay a debt?” Adam’s voice drowned him out, a peal of pitiless thunder.

Rage deprived Victor of utterance. Mouth working, he braced himself against the table.

With great strain Adam pushed himself up, dark brows lowered over hawk-yellow eyes.

“I will not see you destroy yourself for this wretch,” he said, soft.

“Adam, don’t!” Victor cried. “Henry, help me!”

They struggled fruitlessly to press the creature’s great frame against the table. Victor’s temples grew coated in a sickly sheen. At last Adam relented.

“You!” Victor shouted. “Oh, you make my head ache!”

“Hear me, Frankenstein.” The creature breathed harshly.

Victor quieted.

“Let me go while I am human.” Adam’s words came out a shamed whisper.

“What?” Victor leaned close.

“The fear grips me – has always gripped me – that I am rotten and decayed to the very heart – that my abhorred skin is the reality of my true self. But I have sheltered the innocent, and delivered the pure from destruction. I have subverted, for a moment, the monstrous.” Adam’s fingers twitched towards Victor. “Perhaps death is fate’s kindness, for in oblivion, I shall never again grapple against my own reviled malevolent being.”

“You…” Victor sniffed, scrubbing his eyes roughly. “You damned coward!” He roared. “You are – you! Are more human than me!” A harsh cough wrenched from Victor’s lungs. “I’ve known that since you first awoke!”

Victor clutched at Adam’s shoulders, shaking him. “You told me you were glad to be alive! Mark this, Adam. You shall tell me so again!”

“Frankenstein…”

“So live!” Victor cried, fingers digging into Adam’s shoulders as if to plant his words into the man.

“Victor, let me go,” Adam muttered.

“Live, damn you!” Victor shouted in a voice that tore his throat.

Adam’s head lolled against Victor’s arm.

He had not heard.

“Adam? Adam?” Victor prodded and shook, but his creation remained insensate, only the ragged sounds of his breath filling the room.

Victor lifted his shaking hands, jerking them though his curls and smearing blood on his temples.

“Oh God…”

The air hung heavy with the smell of blood. Victor was still. 

Chapter Text

Victor half-crumpled as a series of wet coughs tore from his lungs. He snatched up a pair of scissors, attempting several times to sever the newly-tied threads. The scissors snapped at empty air – for his frame twitched and tremored under the force of his coughs.

There was a flash of silver and a clang as Victor’s hands came up to rub at his chest. He heaved for breath.

A second paroxysm of hacking coughs burst from him, and Victor staggered against the table. His breath came in ragged gasps, and still the wretched noises did not stop. I stood, alarmed. His whole frame stiffened and jerked as if under merciless attack, the guttural sounds issuing from him tearing at me. I hastened to Victor’s side as he turned his head and wretched. Then he was stumbling, folding against me.

My feet caught against each other, and my back slammed into the wall, Victor’s weight pinning me there. Victor’s gasps stirred my hair; I could feel the panicked beating of his heart. Then Henry was pulling him away. He grappled for a moment, Victor thrashing in his hold. At last, Clerval flung Victor into a chair, where he sagged, spent, throat arched back and head lolling as he pulled in stuttering breaths. 

I patted the sweat from Victor’s brow with my sleeve and Clerval proffered him a glass of water, both of us driven to act out the fiction that there still remained some path to undo the finality of this calamity.

Victor took shaky sips from the glass, then shifted forward and gripped the arms of his seat.

“Don’t –”

“Already? –” Henry and I cut across each other, both worried.

“– can’t stop – Adam – !” Victor choked.

“You need to rest,” Henry said, emphatic.

“—if only for a moment,” I finished.

Victor swore viciously.

“Frankenstein!” Henry burst out, “In front of a lady – !”

Victor dropped his head into his hands, muffling his anguished words. He lifted his face, agitated with wild passions, and clutched at his hair again.

“He did not hear me. Adam, he didn’t – !” Victor’s whole frame twitched, as if wishing to fling himself from the chair. “I’ve got to finish. I can make him right!”

“Of course you shall, my Victor,” I said, coming round to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“Can you stand?” Henry asked.

I felt Victor stiffen under my touch.

“I’ve only just gotten my breath back,” he said.

“Get up.”

Victor glared.

“You can’t, can you?”

I felt Victor’s shoulders strain and shudder; on shaking arms, he rose a little from his chair.   

He fell back, trembling.

“I mustn’t stop here!” He cried, still quivering with effort.

“Perhaps after a little rest,” I began, hesitantly pressing him into the chair.

Victor barked out a scornful laugh. “No use.”

He smiled blankly, lifting hands that shook uncontrollably.

“Damn these hands!” Rasping, he reached out blindly for his creation, finding purchase just over Adam’s knee and gripping it tightly.

“Oh Adam, Adam,” he said, voice stifled. He dropped his head, slumping over his unmoving creation.

The awful stench rose in my nostrils again: blood, liquor, sweat, and vomit all rolling together. Under the sound of Victor’s wet breaths, I seemed to hear a ringing in my ears. I clutched my arms.

“God in heaven - !” Victor flung himself back, one arm coming up to block his eyes.

The dim and yellow light from the lamps caught on his wet cheeks. I could not bear to look at him.

My gaze found Adam’s face. His dark and downturned brow imparted him a disturbed and dejected air even in sleep. My chest grew heavy. Was he not to know peace even in death? I watched the slight rise and fall of his chest.

…He was breathing.

“It’s too early,” I said.

Sunk in misery, Victor made no acknowledgement. His shoulders continued to hitch.

“Victor, you told him to live and he’s still alive!” I exclaimed. “How can you mourn while he is still warm?”

“I’m sorry,” Victor cried. “I’m sorry!”

In a broken tone, he began to mutter his creation’s name again and again. 

“You needn’t apologize, only tell me what is to be done,” I said.

“He’s going to die!” Victor burst out, “Can’t you see that?”

“…but he’s still alive,” I repeated.

Victor did not move, only renewed the muttering.

“Frankenstein, give me your journal,” Henry said at length.

“What?” Victor raised his head a little. “The journal? Oh Henry, why must you –”

Lifting Victor’s limp frame, Henry began to rummage in his friend’s pockets.

“…left breast pocket,” Victor muttered, “though I can’t see why you’d want the wretched thing.”

Smiling, Clerval withdrew a small leather-bound notebook, bursting with loose papers, and thrust it into Victor’s hands.

“Show me,” he said.

“What?” Under the exhaustion, Victor sounded afraid. “Please, to unbury the miserable details…I can’t bear it, Henry…”

“Show me what to do,” Henry said. As he spoke, he unbound the ties holding the journal closed.

“My hands are not skilled like yours,” I told him, “but they are steady.”

Loose paper fluttered about Victor as Clerval pulled the journal from his slack hands and began to leaf through it. Victor’s face took on a stricken look, an expression of horror I had not seen since he learned of his mother’s passing.

“You mustn’t see inside him,” he said.

My throat tightened, eyes prickling. Heavy words sat atop my tongue.  I opened my mouth to speak, but all that escaped was an agitated and meaningless sound. 

Victor and Clerval looked at me, both blank.

I seized Victor’s arms, clutching him as though I could imprint upon his skin the words which stuck in my throbbing throat.

“Elizabeth? What…?”

“You’re wrong,” I said, “you’re wrong.” I began to cry.

“Someone’s got my handkerchief,” Henry said, patting at his pockets. His hands fluttered uselessly. He had no idea what to do.

Victor waited, head canted to the side.

“This,” I cried, “is a mere man!” I gripped Adam’s shoulder, profoundly grateful to feel that it was warm. “I care not what – what hellish depths you cobbled him from! Stitching him up cannot hurt me,” I said, “no more so than touching you, Victor.”

With bloodshot eyes, he met my gaze.

“Let me help you,” I said.

A look of extreme anguish passed over his brow and he bowed his head, silent. Then he drew himself up again and took my hands in his own. A light was in his face.

“Very well,” he said. “You’ll have to begin by cleaning the wound. I had intended – but no, it will be best to leave the bullet in. Henry, get the bottle.”

Casting about, Clerval found the flask and uncorked it. He poured a trickle of the green spirits into the hole in Adam’s leg with exacting care. Yet a faint noise escaped the huge man, his mouth wrinkling into a frown. Brownish fluid dribbled from the wound.

Henry set the bottle down. “Never want to drink this stuff again,” he muttered.

The absinthe’s smell reached me, herbal and sharp. And under that, the smell of blood rushed back, making my head swim.

“Not to worry,” I said, “Uncle is not in the habit of sharing.”

Victor snorted.

“Frankenstein, he won’t…feel it, will he?” Henry had lifted the scalpel.

“He will not remember it.” That wasn’t an answer, and Henry knew it.

“You will have to make two incisions.”

“To make a line, yes?”

Victor nodded.

Henry swallowed. With a wet sound, the first cut was over. Adam released a low groan, rolling his foot from side to side. The knife shook. Henry’s lips were moving – mouthing something over and over.

“A good, clean cut,” Victor said. “Just once more, Henry.”

“He’s still – Victor, he’s still moving.”

Victor leaned forward, clasping Adam’s knee again. The creature stilled. Pressing his tongue between his teeth, Henry made the final cut. The scalpel clattered on the table.

“The needle – Henry, are you well?”

Clerval was wiping his hands furiously on his trousers. “Don’t know how you did it,” he laughed shakily.

“Without a pulse there’s relatively no blood,” Victor said in an absent tone. Henry paled.

“The needle, Victor?” I prompted.

He produced it, and hesitated, looking between Henry and I.

“Victor my darling, these stitches are not exactly neat,” I said, lifting Adam’s hand. “And our Clerval is a man of many talents, but sewing is not one of them.”

Victor chuckled, then coughed, dropping the needle into my palm.

I deftly threaded it and leant over Adam’s thigh.

“Line up the edges of the wound,” Victor said. “And aim the needle’s point just above the fatty tissue.”

I passed the needle through once, making a careful knot. The thread bunched, reluctant. It was more difficult to pull taut than through even the thickest of materials. I could feel the living warmth of Adam’s skin beneath my fingertips. Another stitch. He flinched. But he was unconscious of the pain, surely? I bit my lip and dug the needle in again.

The skin came together with a wet sound. I will have to purchase a different shade of green when this is over, I thought, I shan’t ever want to see this thread again. To my fingers, it will always feel slick.

I shifted my weight, my slipper catching in something sticky – old blood. How many hours had we already spent in this room attempting to bind him up? Adam’s rapid breaths stirred hardly any air.

“…As long as I… if the wounds are closed up, he will recover. Right, Victor?”

“…yes,” he said. His gaze was fixed somewhere about my jaw.

I carved another suture. Again. Again. An ache began to build behind my eyes. The thread seemed to dance in the candle’s light. Again. Carefully. He will live.

All will be well.

With a soft snick, the severed threads went limp; I drew the strands through swift loops, and the knot was formed. 

It will. It will.

Adam had ceased to flinch – in fact, he had been lying eerily still for some time now.

“Don’t be an ass, Victor,” I heard Henry mutter with exasperated fondness. “Budge over.”

He had slung Victor’s arm over his shoulder and hauled him over to the settee at the edge of the room.

I glanced over to see Clerval’s fair head settling atop Victor’s dark curls, shoulders fitting awkwardly together. Henry had already fallen into a fitful doze, but Victor regarded me with half-lidded eyes, blinking heavily.  

I looked down at Adam, circling my fingers round his wrist. His pulse beat weak and rapidly. I squeezed his hand in my own. He did not respond. I paused to press a kiss to his brow. There was nothing else to be done.

The pounding in my head was nauseating. I stepped towards Victor. I ought perhaps, to have asked about Adam’s pulse, or roused Victor enough to explain a bandage to me. But I walked as if sloughing through a swamp.

When at last I reached him, it was all I could do to settle into the arm of the couch and pull Victor’s head into my lap. His brow was fever-hot. I fixed my eyes on the shallow rise and fall of Adam’s chest, determined to keep watch lest it should cease. But the room began to blur into vague and dimly colored shapes. I was sinking.

Chapter Text

I awoke.

The light of dawn filtered in through tall windows, resting upon me like soft mist. A dull ache and throb suffused me. And I remembered the bullets. Victor’s worried face and angered pleas rose before me. I lifted a hand, gingerly brushing my fingers across the aching flesh of my thigh, and felt a row of neat stitches. The skin was beginning to come together. How long had I slept?

Through panes dimmed with frost, I could see the sun rising behind the mountains. The wild longing to look on it surged through me; I struggled to sit up, though the stabbing pain in my shoulder made me grit my teeth.

A puff of breath stirred the fine hairs of my arm. Victor had fallen asleep at my bedside, head pillowed on my arm. Only his dark curls were visible. His fingers circled my wrist, thumb resting just over my pulse. He sat atop another bed, rumpled sheets abandoned around him. Elizabeth kept vigil beside it, but she too was lost to slumber.  

Again I looked out at the dawn; I could glimpse only obscured hints, and the fire blazed up within me – to see.  I swung my legs clumsily over the side of the bed, though my thigh burned fiercely at the motion.

Gently, I detached Victor’s hold; he gave a faint mumble – my name, I think.

I braced my shoulders and thrust myself to my feet, only to cry out, collapsing.

“Adam!” Victor cried, alarmed.

I clenched my jaw, breathing deeply against sharp bolts of pain from my wounds.

“The hell do you think you’re doing?” He hissed, leaning in.

I glared. 

“You’ll make them worse and you know it!” Victor stood. “Your injuries –” he paled, swaying slightly.

I raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps you should sit down, Victor.”

He shot me a black look, but conceded.

“You did not answer me,” he said. “Where ever were you trying to go, that would make you so careless of your own hurt?”

I dropped my eyes, unsure if I could make him understand. 

“The dawn,” I began. “It’s – beautiful. I must see it.”

An outraged look flashed across his features, but when he replied, it was mild. “There will be other sunrises, Adam. This one is not worth your pain.”

Anger sparked in my chest. He had not understood me at all. But how could I explain what I could not understand myself?  

“The sunlight is such a promise,” I said, halting. “But I cannot see it from here – not truly. I have to know. For myself. That there is good in this world.”

Victor regarded me with downturned brows. His mouth opened and closed repeatedly, but he was silent.

“I cannot wait for another morning,” I said, gathering my feet under me again.

Victor laid his hand on my arm. “Wait.” He sighed. “You shan’t manage it alone.”

He pushed himself to his feet slowly, as he did catching sight of Elizabeth. He stooped and brushed a kiss on her forehead, regarding her with the most tender expression I had ever seen.

His steps were steady as he made his way to my side, but the line of his shoulders spoke of exhaustion. I regarded him quizzically.

He slipped under my good shoulder. I sought his gaze, but he looked ahead.

“You will have to attempt standing, at least. I’m afraid. I cannot carry you.” I could just see the wry smile on his lips.

“But – you said – ” I began, stupefied.

“I said you couldn’t manage it alone.”

Deeply grateful, I pressed him close. Then I stood. It was slow agony. The muscles of my thigh seized and throbbed at the first hint of my weight. I let my arm hang limp, and leaned heavily on Victor, but even that motion jarred it cruelly. My jaw began to ache from my tightly clenched teeth. Yet I persisted. Together, we shuffled deliberately the short distance to the window. Victor began to tremor minutely under my shoulder. He was pale.

At last we reached the tall panes of glass. They looked one frosty blaze of gold. Victor unlatched the frame and pushed open the windows. We stood side by side in the morning sun.

The world was all before me. Indistinct and pale, the valley lay veiled with mist, the far-off waters of Lake Geneva giving off a dull glint. Above the lake the foothills of Mt. Jura rose, crowned with fire, and higher still hung a long low knife’s edge of cloud, red as the blood on Victor’s blade.

I wept.

Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.