Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is a terrible cracking sound, and for a long, equally terrible moment, Victor is sure some new piece of him has been shattered by the demon—

—but no, no, the beast merely breaks his rifle over its knee as if it were a twig.

What truly awful strength. He doesn't understand; from where is it drawing this frightful power? Victor expected it to be stronger than most men, had selected for it healthy muscle to compliment its larger frame, but this? He built the wretch from mortal men, for God's sake. Young men that were only his to claim because they'd lost their battles, too weak to save their own hides, and yet! And yet, it possesses such power. It is truly a most unholy thing.

The fear, the fury, the pain, and the hot, hot blood filling his mouth spur him to speak; "Kill me! Kill me, now! Do it!"

It spoke of longing, but it cannot fathom the longing inside him, now, that he is alone. How he longs to go where his brother has gone. Where Elizabeth has gone. His damnable creation may possess the power of speech, but it will never, can never understand what all it has stolen from him this night. The grief is almost more than he can bear. How could it possibly—it couldn't. It could never understand. It lacks the capacity. It lacks the soul.

It is hard to hear past the rhythmic pounding of his pulse, echoed in spurts, matching beat for beat, from the torn skin over his shattered lateral nasal cartilage, but it is impossible to ignore the monster's presence when it moves. To not feel its evil nature pressing down on him as it nears. It nears, then kneels there, behind him. Another moment passes with it silent and Victor is compelled to turn, to look, helpless against his mounting anxiety as the confrontation lengthens. How will his death come? Why does it hesitate, now?

The monster is staring at its hand. At Victor's blood, there, dripping down the length of its fore- and middle finger. Will it tear him to pieces with those hands? The hands he chose and carefully assembled both a lifetime and not one full year ago?

"…this is what your will begets, creator," it says, its flat, black eyes rising to meet his own. "Blood. Suffering." It lifts its hand, indicating the blood, his blood, which it spilled and yet it levels onto him the blame. And it is nothing to him! This injury is nothing! It is but a single drop of suffering out of all that this devil has wrought this night. A grain of sand easily lost among the length of a shore.

Victor swallows, half feeling he's begun to drown in the blood pooling in his nasal conchae, draining down through his sinuses to coat the back of his throat. Yet more drenches his lips and finds its way past his gritted teeth to slowly fill his mouth.

"…this is not my will," the monster continues. And it dares to sound pitying.

Victor turns and spits, painting the dark fabric layering its palm with vivid red. There. That is what he thinks of it and its horrid will.

A flash of movement and the hand is gone, for it has him again; large, freezing fingers take hold of his hair and wrench him up, up onto trembling knees as it snarls, there, close enough to rip his throat open with its maw of borrowed teeth.

"Do not think I am not tempted, Victor!" There is no heat to its breath, as it bellows its contempt not an inch from his face. Only moisture, and rushing air, expelled to defile his name. "To bleed you. To humble you. You have gifted me such means with which to punish, and not one scrap of love to deter me!"

"Who—could possibly love one such as you?" Victor asks. It matters not what he feels, only that his end is close, and he must have it. He must have it, for there is nothing left for him—nothing but this wretch, and he will not claim it. He will not.

Its thin, black lips tremble around its snarl. It draws breath, and releases him to crumble again at its feet.

"I could lose myself to it," it says, so quiet the words are almost drowned out by the ceaseless drumming of grief and blood and adrenaline beating against Victor's temples, from behind his eyes. What new nonsense is this? Why must it torture him so!

"Kill me!" Victor cries.

"NO!" it roars in return. It takes him by his coat and tugs him up to meet its eyes, again. "You cannot make me!"

Victor snarls and lunges for it, but it catches his wrists and holds them tight enough he can feel the radius and ulna grind together. Again, he cries out, and thrashes, making pointless, flailing attempts to free himself, cheeks burning as fresh tears spill down to dilute the blood sluggishly clotting around nose and mouth.

"Be still," it says. Orders.

"No," Victor hisses in reply. He will struggle, he will fight. He has nothing else!

"I will not kill you," it says, the vice of its hand unmoving no matter how he contorts himself, refusing to let him free. With its other hand it reaches into its sleeve to tear at—by God, are those the same bandages he'd swaddled it in on the damned and storming night of its birth? Filthy and ragged, but still intact enough to bind his hands, it seems. More strips of yellow bandage appear out from the other sleeve and are added to the first, trapping Victor's hands together in front of him in a mockery of prayer, binding from palms and thumbs, down past his flexor retinaculum, nearly reaching the swell of the flexor carpi radialis, ulnaris and brachioradialis.

"You have denied me death," his horrid creature tells him, "I deny you in kind. You must live, Victor."

He hates the sound of his name in its mouth. Hates it. Had only it died as intended, that he would never suffer the sound again.

"For if you will not grant me a companion, I will take you as one."

This promise, this curse steals what little warmth Victor has left, locking his joints in place even as he is jostled and man handled—and then his mind returns, and he realizes the monster has now situated itself between his legs, and certainty grips him; it means to have him here and now. To make a companion out of him in this cave, this crypt, with Elizabeth not two meters away, oh God, Oh God, no.

"No, no, no," falling from his lips as the rest of his strength drains away, leaving only ice in his veins.

It does not heed him, and why would it? He is little more than its toy, now. A receptacle for its spend. How heartless, how cruel, to demean him, to damn him in this way. It will not murder him in body, but will, with joy, tarnish his spirit with its hellish desires. It will not grant Victor death, but it will tear from him his manhood, his very sense of self, and stain his eternal soul, so even when death is delivered upon him, he will not be granted peace.

The devil pauses in its work, hand gone still over the ankle of his prosthesis. It pushes up his pant leg for further inspection, and the acidic thrill of shame knocks Victor from his horrified stupor.

"Don't—" he hisses, and is ignored, even as he tries to jerk his foot free from its grasp. It holds him, allowing no retreat, and then, simply to shame him further, rips his pant leg past the knee, revealing the harness keeping the false leg firmly attached.

The unholy thing seems fascinated by its discovery. Yes, what a wonder that he is damaged. Rendered a cripple. What intrigue, indeed. It traces the length of the varnished wood, to the false knee, across the stabilizing bar, to the leather lacing fastening the harness around his stump. Its touch is strange, and wrong, just as it had been when under his power; it feels not with palm but with the tip of its middle finger, the rest of its digits lifted away. The touch seems mocking in its care, its false gentleness.

It stokes the fire of shame in Victor. He funnels it quickly into fury.

"My reward," Victor says, venomously, "for attempting to save you from your rightful demise."

"…I…don't un—derstand," it stammers.

And he scoffs. Barks a hoarse laugh that quickly fizzles down to a wet growl from his blood-coated throat. "I went back to save you," he says. "From the fire."

"…fire…"

There it is. There is the vacant, imbecilic countenance Victor truly recognizes. It had perhaps fooled them both, for a time, with its rough-edged mastery of speech, but the dullness of the eyes betray that the performance was less understanding and more mindless recitation. Just a parlor trick. Smoke and mirrors. In truth, the creature he breathed life into is as stupid as any beast. It always has been.

Again, Victor tries to draw his leg away, but the monster snatches it back, pulling it and the rest of him forward by an inch with another inhuman growl. Victor raises his chin in defiance. It is a brute, that's all—and that is all it will ever be. A brutish, beastly wretch, and it can draw him low, and still he will never be as lowly as it. No creation of the Almighty ever could.

Some of that renewed resolve flickers out as it begins unlacing his prosthesis. His hands may be bound, but his fingers remain free and Victor pushes at the creature's fingers with his own, trying in vain to deter it from robbing him of this—this piece of him—of crippling him fully.

It cares not. It is soulless, heartless. It tugs his harness free, and as the cold air hits the knotted, scarred flesh, Victor hears himself sob aloud.

Now. Now is when he realizes he is truly its captive. What hope has he of escape, now? He is hobbled and humbled both. There is no escape.

If only it hated him just a little less, and granted him death instead.

Chapter Text

It does not mount him, as he had feared. It does not defile him beside the body of his beloved Elizabeth, against frozen rock and the growing light of dawn.

When it has finished robbing him of his limb, it simply ties off the pant leg, takes him by the waist and hoists him over its shoulder. He protests, of course, but is ignored. It pushes to its feet, and, handling him with less dignity than a sack of grain, the devil carries Victor away from the woman he'd loved without restraint. A love that might have saved him. A love that was pure and true, unlike any he will ever know again.

…What does it mean that it takes his prosthesis with them?

Victor does not know. His strength is failing, and the positioning—waist tucked over its shoulder, legs trapped against its chest, and the rest of him hanging down its back—further muddles the brain, too much blood collecting inside his skull to think through. As they reach the trees, the edge of the forest surrounding his father's manor, the futility of his position solidifies, and bears down on him with such weight.

There is nothing he can do, now. Nothing. Nothing.

The sun rises higher. Between one breath and the next, it shoots from the level position of morning to high enough to threaten noon.

Marvelous. Now he's losing time.

Again.

It happened often, after the explosion. Even after he had 'recovered', every cut and scrape healed, a new cap of flesh over the nub of his leg, he found his mind wandering without his say, leaving him bereft for hours, entirely unawares, only to be told later that he had spent the time staring dumbly at a wall or out a window.

It happened often, after losing his mother.

And so again, melancholia takes hold, and he submits to it readily and without complaint. Take from him the drudgery of this unwanted journey. He cares not.

…he cares a little. God, his head hurts. It feels frozen and bloated from blood, both.

When the ache becomes truly unbearable, he begins swatting at the monster's legs, albeit weakly, and saying; "let me down. Let me down. Stop, damn you, let me down."

Granted, he hadn't expected it to work. And yet, soon after he begins squirming, the monster lifts him free of it and settles him upright against a tree trunk. He blinks at it, bleary and surprised. It looks back at him, expression unreadable.

Then its eyes wander upward and it reaches toward him, toward his head. Victor flinches away, retreating into his coat somewhat, with a sharp, "don't. You dare touch me."

It does still…but only for a moment. Then it bullishly defies him, presses cold, dead fingers to his forehead and—

—brushes his curls back from his eyes. It stops, considering the adjustment, then returns to rearranging his hair with a silent intensity he knows not how to parse.

"What…are you doing?" he asks, utterly bewildered.

That seems to break whatever spell his hair had caught the beast in, and it fully withdraws its loathsome touch. Is it compelled to groom him now? As if he were another animal within its pack? God, must it level insult after injustice after insult!

"Why ask…mmme to. To put you down?"

Ask! He did not ask! Why would he bother to ask anything of this evil thing? How could he possibly expect it to listen?

Victor draws himself upright to glower at his captor from down the length of his broken nose. There is no point in explaining, so he won't waste his breath.

As the silence drags through the seconds into a full minute, the monster's near blank expression turns sour. It flashes its teeth, then presses its lips together and casts its eyes from him entirely. Its medial pterygoid flexes beneath its masseter, an all too human display of frustration.

"Are you. Hungry?" it asks, staring into the snow past its knees.

Victor scoffs in surprise.

"Are you thirsty?" it asks, its anger beginning to color its otherwise flat affect.

"And if I was?" he asks, eyes darting to its ratty, hole ridden cloak in search of a hidden water-skin or some such, which he doubts it even has. Forethought has never been his creation's strong suit.

The monster shifts, causing its coat to part enough to reveal there is, indeed, nothing beneath it but an equally ratty shirt. Then it lifts its hand, and presses a fist full of snow against Victor's face.

Victor sputters, turns away, and begins beating it about the arms with his bound hands.

It relents, glowering at him with the airs of a disapproving governess. As if he were the unruly child here!

"Eat it," it says, once again showing its true nature, the hatred in its heart for humanity, through glare and teeth and furious whispers. "It melts to water."

"I know that," Victor snaps.

Again, the monster flexes its jaw, then curls its lips back in a snarl. Victor's eyes jump to its hands as they draw into trembling fists.

Then, suddenly, it stands.

"That is what I would do," it says, quietly, then turns and walks away. Leaving Victor behind to gawk in confusion, until he thinks to retrace the conversation in full.

Are you thirsty?

And if I was? he had asked it.

And it had answered, both with and without words.

This, this alone, means nothing. It points to nothing. And it'd shoved snow into his face like a fool. A new cruelty, to be sure. A fresh sting applied to his already aching, freezing skin.

Victor turns to wipe his face against the fur of his collar until it at least feels dry again.

His captor has not wandered far. It is well within Victor's line of sight, slowly pacing between the trees, hands reaching for each, fingers dragging over rough bark with each pass. Its expression is pensive. Or perhaps it is just angry about the cold. He really must be more careful about projecting human emotion onto the thing. It suits neither of them to pretend.

"…have I upset you?" Victor asks, feigning concern.

Its head snaps around to glower at him, the high sun filtering through the canopy of firs to reflect off the snow, and set alight the unholy gold of that accursed left eye.

He should have destroyed it the moment he realized something had gone wrong with that eye. He had selected it for its color and clarity, taken it from a very human man, and yet, set into this devil's face, it has become something else entirely. Something vile, and animal, and threatening. A predator's eyes at night, glowing under the moon.

A demon's eyes, granting him but a glimpse into the hell of its true origin. An eye one should never meet, for it will only level damnation and sorrow upon you.

Victor is already damned, so many, many times over, so he remains defiant under its hateful gaze. Silence stretches between them for a time, before the beast again retreats from his ire, cowed by his certainty. Its eyes drop to his left leg, still whole, as it grinds out; "I. Know you. Do not care."

Again, its speech degrades into halting, uneven clauses. And to think it had almost convinced him it could be fluent.

"You are right," he replies, with false cheer and a forced smile. "I do not care if I upset you. In fact, I intend to do so often, and with regularity." His smiling mask has fallen, revealing his own hate, his own rage. "I will not be your obedient captive!"

"…I will take no other," it replies.

It approaches him again, with slow, even, and silent steps. How it could have learned such skill, such precision, he knows not. It is large and cumbersome and lacking entirely in grace—or rather, it was while in his care. This demonstration of prowess is so pointed, so deliberate, there is no question in its intentions. It wishes him to fear it; to remind him he is at its mercy. He hates it, because it is working.

"I will not subject another soul to the wwwickedness of your design. To a monster. To me."

"You think yourself noble for that, hmm?" Victor blusters, doing as he has always done and burying his fear behind his God-given authority. "Merciful? Impossible; you've no mercy in you. You are a hollow, ungodly wretch and nothing more!"

The demon's lips twitch, then pull back into a snarl of a smile. "You are my God, Victor, and I your wretch." It stops and kneels just outside his reach, arms folding around its legs, hugging them to its chest, just as it had done so many times in the lowest room of the water tower. The mismatched furs clumsily applied to its coat make it seem enormous even as it sits before him, fetal.

"There is no mercy in you," it continues. "For I have known mercy—have read of divine mercy, and forgiveness—"

"Read!" Victor blurts. "You've read?! You!"

"Yes," the demon snarls, uncurling in an instant to plant one hand before it and ready itself to lunge. And yet it restrains itself, if only barely, and is left trembling from the effort. "The first book; the first man, and first woman, cast out by their God. At least they were given a reason. At least they were told their sin! That is mercy! A mercy you refuse to bestow!

"I remember the fire. I had buried it sssomewhere in—inside myself, but I remember…how you looked at me. How you left me. You demanded a new word and I gave it to you, and still, you left me."

Victor trembles, gripped by the fear the monster might repeat the word, the name to him again. It would undo him, to hear her name pass its lips.

"The fire, too, was your creation," it says, instead. "Why you lie to me, say—say you tried to come back for me—"

"That is no lie," Victor snaps. "Just the madness you inspire taking hold of me again! And I have already been punished for it!" He slams a gloved fist against what is left of his rectis femoris, and then again, and then again, until the muscle burns from chill and abuse, both. "I have already lost everything! Years and years wasted, fed to madness and obsession, and nothing but you to show for it!

"I lost it all, but I was better. I was free and was—I was—"

The words stick in his throat.

He was beginning to make amends, to repair his neglected relationship with his younger brother, and now—

Victor no longer sees his creation before him. Only his brother, dressed for his wedding. The blood, staining his fine hair, his fair skin, his white vest. The eyes beginning to lose focus. The voice weak. The tone one he had never heard before. Far too dour for his William. Far too damning.

He knows what William said was the truth. He knows, and he cannot face it.

The loss is too great.

He had never loved his brother, not truly. Not until he was stripped of his delusions of grandeur and reduced to a hobbling guest in his brother's house. Victor still had moments of loathing, of fierce and blinding jealousy, but as time passed and his mind cleared, he could see, truly see, all he lacked. All his sins, his missteps, laid bare against the relief of his brother's easy happiness.

William and Elizabeth were all that was left to him. He could not find comfort in his brother's betrothed—her loathing of him was palpable and she no longer tolerated his presence, even if he vowed to stay silent, she would not suffer sharing the room—but William seemed at the time…amenable to Victor's attempts at reconciliation.

But in truth, in secret, he…he had been frightened? Always? Since childhood?

How could he see it so clearly, the monster Victor endeavored to hide? Was it ever hidden at all, or had he only ever managed to hide it from himself?

Elizabeth saw it. Perhaps William had even warned her about the monster in the family. The uncaring storm in the guise of a man. The true source of all their misery.

Had William only told him sooner. Had he just told him, Victor would—anything, Victor would have done anything to make it right. Just as he would have done anything, good or evil, to keep William from slipping through his grasp. Like Elizabeth. Like Mother.

Distantly, Victor realizes he's begun to cry. To sob. To scream. All of it outside his control.

And his captor, his creation, his albatross, watches him in silence.

There is nothing behind the dark, dead eyes. No comprehension. No soul at all.

It could never understand. Never.

Never.

Chapter Text

Victor cries until his body refuses to produce any more evidence of his grief, leaving behind such a painful hollow in him, he mirrors his creation by curling fetal, there, beneath a fir tree deep in the woods outside his family's estate.

The tears run dry, but the madness in him feels bottomless, and greedy, latched to him and intent to suckle every ounce of misery his soul can expend. Only exhaustion frees him from the dark spirals of his own mind, the awful, inescapable truths that had him screaming wordlessly, rocking and covering his face with his bound hands.

He doesn't know how long he cried, or rocked, or screamed, or sat in silence, numb to the marrow. The breadth of the afternoon, likely, for when he is pulled out of his reverie, the light has begun to wane. He only barely registers the movement when his loathsome creation decides to shatter his peace by drawing near, yet again. He is unsuspecting, made docile in his exhaustion, unable to find the strength to pull away when it tucks its hand against the nape of his neck.

And, without warning, it pulls him forward into a new fistful of snow.

The shock sends a fresh spike of adrenaline through him. Victor curses it and jerks left, then right in an attempt to escape, but the monster tightens its grip, trapping him there, its bulk on one side and the fir's trunk on the other, as it drags the snow against him again, and again, and again. It digs the ice in around his torn flesh, his crumbled cartilage, over his cheeks and across his mouth. It feels as though the assault goes on for hours.

Then, by no logic he nor any other mortal man could hope to decipher, it trades the snow for the fur of his own coat, pressing the pelt lining his collar against his mouth, cheeks, and across the ruin of his nose.

Victor barely has the voice left to level at it the profanities it deserves, but when it finally deigns to release him, he demands of it an answer. "Punishment?" he guesses, truly knowing of no other explanation for why it would torture him this way. "For expressing my grief? For mourning?"

Oddly, infuriatingly, the monster attempts to appear genuinely apologetic. It struggles to meet his eyes, lips tightly pursed, gaze darting between his face and his collar and back again. Now, it's sorry? Now? Now? Of all its sins, this one was far from the worst!

After a bit firmer prodding, the wretch presses out the word; "cleaning."

"…cleaning," Victor repeats. That's it's excuse? What fool does it take him for? What on God's Earth has gone wrong in its rotten head?

Again, the beast seems to struggle for the most simple of words, needing full seconds to form them with its unholy mouth. "You. Were bloodied," is what it says.

Another breath passes between them before realization dawns, and Victor brings his bound hands up to inspect his own countenance. The truth of the assault is there, in the absence of dried blood around his nose and mouth.

…that is still the most—how could it—he was half certain it was trying to suffocate him, or scrape his skin from his skull!

"That hurt," Victor says. "And no warning—never do that again. Never."

This causes the demon to sulk. Yes, sulk, with eyes downcast as its lips part and purse, beginning to form words only to abandon them, unvoiced. Then it rakes its hair back from its face and announces; "It's late. Www—wwwe are going."

It tips towards him, again, and Victor attempts to scramble out of its considerable reach. "Don't you dare," he hisses. "Not again!"

"You ww—want to walk?" it asks him, displaying it knows how to mimic exasperation.

"Yes," he says, and points to his prosthesis left discarded behind the devil, "give me my—"

"No," it says.

"Yes!" Victor says. "I will not endure that injustice again, being shouldered like a—do you have any idea—no, forgive me, how would you?"

"Explain it, then," the monster snarls.

"How?" he asks, the word breaking over an incredulous laugh as it strains what he can still reach with his upper register. Are there even words small enough to allow it to comprehend—

"Try, Victor," it orders, its timber and the animalistic growl beneath it threatening it is drawing near the end of its patience, and that it is likely to resort to more violence unless given its way.

"Fine," Victor growls. "Fine! I will try to dumb it down to a suitably simple explanation." And why not? Why not embrace this 'teaching moment'? After all, he is only freezing, suffering a migraine from dehydration, and already hoarse from venting a fraction of his unending grief with a few several dozen screams. Let him just set all that aside to explain the obvious.

"We are slaves to gravity, yes?"

It stares at him blankly.

"…Gravity?" he repeats, slower this time. When no recognition sparks, Victor draws in a steadying breath. "The Force that Keeps Us Tethered to the Ground."

To this it nods, though its corrugator and depressor supercilii remain furrowed, an indication it has not in fact managed comprehension.

"Will you use that head I gave you—" Victor pleads before deciding he hasn't the time, easier to just feed it the prompt; "You know, already, that I am full of…what?"

It continues to stare, and he deeply considers returning to his mindless screaming. "Blood. I am full of blood. Blood is a liquid, yes? Yes, when tipped upside-down? What happens? Hmm?"

This he does leave hanging for a moment, though more for emphasis than an expectation the demon may stagger its way to the correct conclusion. It does seem to be listening, eyes on him again, brow relaxing in anticipation. It makes no attempt to provide an answer, no, of course not, just watches him dumbly, expectantly, waiting to be hand-fed.

"What happens," Victor continues, loosening his tenuous hold on his composure and finding it snaps almost instantly; "is that ALL OF MY BLOOD RUSHES TO MY HEAD! THAT IS NOT GOOD! THAT IS DANGEROUS!"

He gains some satisfaction in how badly it startles at his raised voice, volume limited though it may be from his taxed vocal folds. Yet more satisfaction blooms when it appears properly cowed. It nods at his wisdom with small but emphatic bobs of its head, eyes lowered in deference. Good. Maybe it can be reasoned with.

"It was killing me slowly," he adds. "Understand?"

"Yyyes," it rasps. And nods a few more times.

Then it reaches for him again, and Victor instinctively presses backward. It does pause, arms halfway between them both, hands open and listless as it hesitates.

"Not." It turns one of its extended hands from supination to pronation, in a surprisingly apt gesture,"Upside-down."

"…yes, not upside-down," Victor agrees. And, with some trepidation that his trust in it is misplaced, allows his creation to draw him back into its arms.

He regrets his acquiescence immediately. A fraction of his olfactory system has returned, no longer bogged down by the oppressive stench of copper, though he would take its return gladly over the reek clinging to his wretched creation.

"Do you clean yourself?" he asks it, struggling to keep his nasalis from contracting in warranted disgust. The biting cold (and unasked for snow assault) has taken most of his pain from him, but the compressor naris is torn and has been given no splint to correct its position, and so much as a twitch sends fresh sparks of pain across each connecting nerve.

"Yes," it rumbles—a most disquieting thing to feel against his side.

"I don't think you do," Victor mutters, and finds he's being ignored, as his self-made demon is preoccupied with arranging him to its satisfaction. Primarily it seems concerned with tucking both of his legs into the protection of its coat. An attempt to trap him, no doubt. And now his pants will share its stink as well.

He is thinking sullenly of how animals mark their territory when the brute decides all is to its liking and turns to finally collect his discarded false-leg.

"Give that to—" Victor starts, but is rebuffed with a sharp look and a growl. No, it will be carrying it in its other hand, only needing the one to keep Victor tucked, there, to its chest.

It had carried Elizabeth in both arms—

—Victor retreats into himself to avoid further thoughts of her.

When he returns, it is to find the light all but gone from the sky. The wind has picked up, and he realizes he has turned toward his captor to shield his face from the chill. Its musk is strong—that of a man living rough but also of aged blood and something deeply inhuman. Its hair is greasy and lank, occasionally blown against his cheek.

He slips away again, weathering the rest of their travel in the briefest bursts of cognizance. The jostle from climbing over some obstacle, here. The burst of wind as they enter a gap between the trees, there. He may even sleep, he cannot rightly say.

It is the lack of wind that draws him forth to realize they are entering yet another cave. It is too dark for his eyes to discern much beyond the threshold, but the abomination seems to have no such disadvantage. Soon, it deposits him against a wall within sight of the cave's opening, shielded from the elements by a natural curve. It leaves him without a word, moving about the gloom with purpose, though to what end he cannot fathom.

He is considering sleep when a spark blooms, and then another. Flint, being struck to light something—to light kindling to form a meager fire, it turns out, cordoned off from spreading with a carefully laid ring of stones, all revealed as the tinder catches.

His captor settles before its fire, hands held forward to soak up its warmth. There is something almost human in how its hands flex, long digits curling in and extended out again in turns; an attempt, perhaps, to regain circulation?

Victor's eyes wander to find something else, settling on a bundle of sticks, there, beside the demon. The wood is dry—not something gathered on the way here, no, but left for later use, like the stones arranged just so.

They are in one of the creature's dens, it seems.

(And that cave where it took him hostage, where it laid his love to rest, had that been another? Its lodging during the day, perhaps? Somewhere to sequester until the sun had set and it could slink through his family's grounds, unseen?)

"Are. You hungry?"

Victor catches himself starting to look its way and pointedly retrains his attention on the fire. He adjusts his coat leisurely, as if he were alone, as if no one had spoken.

"…are you thirsty?"

Victor's eyes trace the stones. Most are the size of his fist, but there is one facing him with dimensions closer to that of the common brick. If he took it in both hands—while it slept, perhaps—

"…who was she? The w—uhman in the white dress?"

His breath catches. It is provoking him intentionally, he is—he can simply ignore it.

"She knew me. And…I her, but I don't. Know from. Where."

Victor's hands flex around one another. He digs his fingernails in until it cuts through the numb, becoming four bright aches along the first dorsal interosseus and abbuctor pollicis.

"…was she my mother?"

The question is so absurd, it startles a laugh out of him; one hoarse note of surprise and disbelief.

"No, no." Victor has to swallow his laughter in order to reply. Somehow he finds his composure and holds to it long enough to say; "your 'mother' is further north. A battle field, and its many corpses. That is the only mother you will ever have."

"…why, then, did she love me?"

…yes. Why indeed?

A memory begins to stir—the argument on the staircase, and Elizabeth in a nightgown barely opaque enough to preserve her modesty, their last conversation before—

Victor sucks a portion of his buccal mucosa between his teeth and bites down; one pain to distract from another. He does not answer…and if his creation prods for more, he does not hear it.

The only sound for a time is the crackling of the fire as it slowly licks away at its meal of twigs.

Then the creature sighs and says; "It is time we sleep."

"We," Victor parrots back with a touch of mockery.

"We," his creation agrees. It motions him to it, saying, "as my companion, you will keep me warm."

"No, I think not."

"…you can come to me or I to you. The outcome will be the same."

Victor's pride stirs and grows solid in his gut, pinning him there with the cave's wall to his back. No, he will not come to it. He will not crawl eagerly into its arms, like a dog called, nor a beckoned whore. If it insists on having its way, it will have to make him.

This quickly comes to pass, much to Victor's displeasure. He is once again arranged by its large hands, now to lay before the fire with it at his back. It folds its arms around him, caging him against the long line of its torso, one leg lifting to trap his own below it. He is given but a single mercy; it leaves his arms free.

And how fortunate, that.

As the creature presses closer, face settling first against the cushion of Victor's coat, and then up enough to press against his nape, a fresh wave of fear crashes upon him.

Will it be here, then? Will it demand of him, now, what a man does of his companion? They lay, back to front, the lining of Victor's coat too thick to feel if the demon has already begun to engorge.

He holds his breath when its arms tighten, and it begins pressing some flat plane of its face against his hair and neck. Its temple, perhaps, or the flat of its vertical plate. The pressure eases but quickly returns; now dragging in a small circle. Around and again, clockwise, and he empties his lungs slowly, air pushed out from between his teeth.

It feels like hours before it settles, but its arms never wander further south than his ribcage. Its lower half does not rock forward to find some piece of him to rut. Its breathing worries him, for a time, until he realizes it is not arousal causing it to hitch.

It may be that it is…crying. But that is none of his concern.

No, his eyes are fixed on the rock in front of him.

It is only a matter of time, and in the fullness of time, the demon settles and its breathing draws even, then deepens. Victor waits, and waits, until he is almost certain it has passed beyond the realm of the waking. Then he waits a little longer.

Then, when the fire has all but died, he reaches carefully forward and slowly closes his fingers around the rock he had singled out earlier in the evening. Its time guarding the fire has made it almost too hot to touch, but Victor grits his teeth and carefully, carefully lifts it from the floor and draws it towards him.

He may only have this chance—he must make it count.

And how fortunate that the devil has pressed itself there, against his neck. He need only follow the natural arch of his arm and apply enough force—

Victor closes his eyes and thinks; For William.

There is very little space between the first blow and the next, and the next after. All falls away but the reverberation created when his strike lands, and the burn in his triceps and trapezius as he draws the stone up and back down again in a sharp, mechanical motion.

The arms around him spasm, try to claw their way upward only to convulse under the next blow.

The skull gives way, and he does not stop.

For William.

The breathing against his neck breaks into the cry of a wounded animal, perhaps an attempt at a word or two, but soon is nothing more than a wet gurgle.

He does not stop. Not until there is no breath at all.

Then, when all is quiet, he lets the stone fall from his hands. Ignoring the damp all down his back and forearms, Victor drags himself free of the corpse and toward his awaiting prosthesis. Once the laces are taut and double tied, he pulls himself up the cave wall and to his feet.

He does not look back on the ruin of his creation, only forward, around the curve to the cave's mouth, out into the snow, and into the dark of near-dawn.

Free, again.

And alone.

Chapter Text

His creator is warm.

Physically, not in disposition.

Because his creator hates him.

It takes a moment to convince himself to—to actually lay his face against the wet tangle of black curls. He knows his creator would not want it, but he suspects he cannot make Victor hate him any more than he already does. Enough to find him repulsive. Enough to shoot at him, with the woman right there—

Her hair was straight and fine and flowed down from her head like the sunset caught in a stream. It was soft against his hand and smelled of flowers he did not know the names of. The scent of blood overpowered the flowers quickly. He holds onto the memory of those flowers, and her eyes, and how she embraced him without hesitation, and he hopes with all his heart that the memories will never fade.

He wishes he knew why she could love him when his creator could not. He wishes he knew why it mattered that he see her pass beyond his reach. Did she know he could not follow? He dearly hopes she did not. She didn't seem cruel, simply…accepting that her time was coming to an end.

He has died, and knows that it is blessedly peaceful, and for all that he wishes he could have had more time with her, could have held her longer and known her truly, he cannot begrudge her accepting such peace. He only wishes he were offered that lasting peace as well. Laid there beside her and gone to sleep, never to rise.

He wonders what she would think of his actions, since. His cruelty. Did she know he was a monster, Victor's monster, or did she think he was better?

If she were here, would she be disappointed in him?

…she is not here, so it matters little, and he does not know her, so he can't rightly speculate.

Victor's hair smells of sweat and fear and faintly of the gunpowder from his rifle—or the smaller gun, rather, as he had not the chance to turn the rifle on his creation.

He is warm, in his creature's arms, and solid, and real. He is also stiff, no doubt thinking hateful things he has rightfully earned by taking him captive.

Before, when he carried Victor in the crook of his arm, there was something…unspeakably lovely that happened. Victor relaxed against him, after a time, and then, without prompting, turned to press his face into his creature's shoulder. It seemed almost like he was seeking comfort from what he made. It was…so very gentle. It had surprised him, that Victor would ever offer him such tenderness.

He thinks Victor must have done it in his sleep. Perhaps that is why he is so stiff, now; he'd slept on the walk here and now needs no more of it.

He is only laying here, because he is a captive.

Again, he must face the ugly truth that he has forced this man into his arms. A man who hates him, who wants to destroy him, not because he would welcome it, not because it would end his suffering, but because Victor loathes his very existence.

Part of him—the part that enjoyed ripping the hide off a wolf, and the hunter's jaw from his face—hisses good. Better we both suffer. He should be punished for releasing wickedness upon the world.

It is the part that ruled him, when Victor limped into the cave and found the woman where he'd placed her. The part that urged him forward and told him now was the time to draw blood. That he was made a monster, so he would be a monster.

There was another part of him, so quiet at first, but still persistent, that drew his attention to the blood on his hand.

It could have been the woman's blood. It was the same color.

It could have been his friends' blood, painting the stone floor of his cabin.

It could be his own blood, for even if he was not human, he bled red, all the same.

It was then that he realized it did not matter why the blood was spilt, simply that it was wrong, and he did not want it. He had in him the capacity for great violence, and truly great horrors, and he did not want them.

It would make a liar of his friend, who called him good.

It would make the woman wrong, for seeing something in him worth loving.

He would be undeserving. More than he already was, wretched and built from waste.

Son of a battlefield and…Victor Frankenstein.

But in seeking his own ends, some small prize that may make this eternal life worth living, has he done something worse?

Victor is so warm, and does not want to be here. Victor does not love him, will not look upon him with anything but contempt, today and the next, until time or disease or misfortune takes him, too, to from his body to eternal rest.

The right thing to do, the good thing, would be to accept his lot and suffer alone.

But he is…not a good enough man to suffer alone.

And Victor must be punished for what he did to that woman. He must be punished for creating something evil and unwanted.

Why should his punishment not also benefit the one he sought to destroy? Isn't it right and good that he be repaid? And is it truly evil what he asks for?

Is this evil? What he does now?

…how can it be evil to hold another?

Does Victor not realize what he would give to be held by anyone?

He squeezes his eyes shut, pressing the tears onto his lashes and down his patchwork cheeks. He holds his breath, and only releases it again when he is certain no sound will come. It is the only way he knows to cry, for when sorrow found him in the mill house, he had been in hiding, and could not risk alerting the family. When loneliness and longing overwhelmed him, he could not express it without jeopardizing this life he had found.

…it had been a good life.

Oh, how he wishes to return to that life. How he wishes he never went looking for the answers. If he had stayed, if he had only stayed, he could have protected his friend. He could have been introduced to the hunters—or hid again, until they had gone.

Instead, he is here, clutching the man who gave him life, and denied him all else.

But Victor is warm. Very little is warm, in winter. The snow is beautiful, it makes the world clean, but the cold is awful, and that is all he has been all day. Cold.

But Victor is warm.

He does not know when he falls asleep, but he is certain it was the warmth that helped guide him there.

He is awoken by pain, terrible pain, and while his mind is still somewhat intact, he wonders if he has been shot again. If he had ever escaped the hunters at all. Then it becomes hard to think, and then it is just pain—pain—

And then he is at rest.

He awakes to a dead fire and sunlight pouring from the cave mouth, and dried blood coating his hair.

And Victor is gone.

Chapter Text

Victor has always hated these woods.

They are dark and thick and unwelcoming, and he never ventured very far into them. Even on the rare occasion he got it into his head to run away, he never could bring himself to fully leave sight of the manor's grounds.

He had tried to run away more than once, actually. After all, Father had William now, and William, Father. Victor was extraneous. Little more than a tumor, leeching away nutrients from a healthy body.

But he had never managed to run very far, not until Father's death.

And never had he ventured this far into the woods, so it is little surprise that he is now very, very lost.

The sun is high, and mocking, for it extends to him no warmth. It simply sits up there, adding glare to the snow, further complicating his efforts to find the edge of the wood and worsening his splitting headache.

He did eat some snow, in an attempt at hydrating his cells, most importantly his brain, but he could not risk ingesting much without the means to heat it first. His energy stores were already being taxed by the environment, and the peripheral vasoconstriction that happened in response was quite unpleasant.

His feet were the first to go numb—he was wading through snow in dress shoes for God's sake—followed quickly by his hands and face. He clutches his coat close, trying to trap any heat expended through radiation and protect his core from further loss through convection. Still, time is running out. If he does not find the edge soon, or some good Samaritan wandering here-in, Victor will succumb to the elements.

Surely someone put together a search party for him. Surely someone was looking.

It is a special kind of torture, to know when your body is beginning to die. And oh, how well he knows the preludes to this particular death. Understanding hypothermia is quite important in regions subject to harsh winters, so he was of course taught the signs and means of treatment very early.

His body's core temperature is dropping from the standard human range of 36.5 to 37 degrees Celsius, due to four distinct mechanisms; radiation, conduction, convection and evaporation. There is very little he can do while lost in the elements to mitigate these factors, especially while wearing clothing ill-suited for the season.

But he was supposed to be going to a wedding. That's why he was dressed for one. There was supposed to be a wedding.

They're both gone now, and he was the fool who thought he could do something about it, so off he went without taking the time to so much as change his shoes. Just threw on a fur coat and gave himself over to the wilds.

He should have taken some of the fire with him.

He never should have left the cave at all. What was he even trying to get back to? An empty house? An empty life?

No. No, better to die out here, on his terms, than stay shackled to that abomination.

…and it won't be long now. He's surely entering mild hypothermia, if not edging into moderate.

It is a good sign he continues to shiver, and he will be nearing the end, should he stop. It is his hypothalamus fighting in vain to keep his internal systems regulated, putting his metabolism into overdrive, burning energy at two to five times his standard basal metabolic rate. When that energy is depleted, there will be nothing he can do.

His body is producing heightened amounts of thyroid, catecholamine, and adrenal hormones. His sympathetic nervous system is causing peripheral vasoconstriction across his skin, digestive track and kidneys, all in hopes to promote thermogenesis. The urge to piss due to cold diuresis is becoming quite obnoxious, frankly, but he would only be expending yet more heat, and risking further conduction as the liquid running down his leg comes in contact with the frigid air.

He may experience cardiorespiratory arrest which would, honestly, be his preference. One minute awake, the next face down in the snow, heart and lungs both deciding they've had enough at the same time, resulting in immediate unconsciousness.

If he is not lucky, it will be his mental faculties that will degrade next. There's the cognitive decline, judgment impairment, memory impairment, and…

And…no he remembers this one, he does, it begins with an 'a'.

Dysarthria and…ataxia.

Ataxia; a neurological sign consisting of lack of voluntary coordination of muscle movements.

See, father? Given a moment, he will remember.

And he's the damned patient this time, so he'll take as much time as he wants!

Just…sitting, perhaps. Below this tree, yes, it's…it's a good a place as any other.

What's next…mild into moderate, what is next…

Temperature decrease from 32 to 28 degrees. Lethargy is common. Hypo tension, bradycardia and brad…brady, bradypnea. Yes, those happen…and dilated pupils due to hyporeflexia…

And shivering ceases around 31 degrees.

When shivering stops, a very odd thing can happen, called paradoxical undressing. It occurs when the blood vessels suddenly dilate, all the heat stored in the core rushing to the extremities with such force, it feels as though one is on fire. And so the victim—already mentally impaired by this stage—strips in hopes to cool their burning skin.

They will not find relief. Likely they die in that imaginary fire, burning from within. What a sad, pathetic way to go.

The flames may be coming for him, now. He thinks they must have chased him since childhood, for the angel always came to him wreathed in fire. He never considered they might be here to consume him. There's his arrogance again. Where did that even come from? He'd been such a nervous child…

The sun is so bright. His future had been bright, too, until he fed it to a water tower and flushed it down like piss staining french porcelain.

…no, he hadn't flushed. He refused to, that, that disgusting power play, he flat refused. All to get a body Victor would never agree to place his rotten brain into. It was a waste. It was all a waste.

He should have just stayed there while the fire spread. He should have sat with the evil thing he'd created and let it consume them both. Let it hold him…

He can feel it now, the fire, lapping at his legs and arms, but his strength won't come to him. Only his angel, his dark angel, can move him.

The angel bends and gathers him into its arms, allowing him to rest his fevered head against the heated metal of its pauldron. And Victor burns, and he burns, and he burns, as he deserves to.

It holds him there, trapping him in the flames and he screams, but he is mortal and it is an angel, and he is no Jacob, he is an orphan, he is an atheist, he is a heretic and apostate. He tried to be God and was found wanting.

And he burns and he burns and he burns until he sleeps.

Victor wakes to his mother and father arguing, again.

"—never listen to me—"

"—will not let you die—"

A nursemaid forces water down his throat, and he sputters and coughs, and spits a curse at her. Where is mother? He wants mother.

"You will suffer me," says the nursemaid, who is a man. His skin condition is appalling. He must be here seeking father's aid, in which case he should go and get it and leave Victor to sleep.

"You are sick," the man says.

The man.

"The man downstairs," Elizabeth gasps.

"You saw him?" he asks—and why can't he see her? Why are his eyelids so heavy?

He is plied with more water.

"Is he a patient? A victim?"

Another handful of water, so he cannot answer her.

"His wounds. You wounded him like that?"

"No, Elizabeth—" he manages before the hand returns and forces him to drink again.

"…Eli…zabeth."

He had asked for any other word, any word but his name, because part of him did not wish to destroy his creation, did not know if he could shoulder such a loss, but he would not take that one. No, that name was not for its lips.

…yet she chose it in the end, didn't she? Over him. Over William.

"The very conflagration that devoured everything."

Saturn, eating his son.

"I did all I could for her, you must know that."

But he didn't, father, he didn't, because it did not make sense.

Nothing makes sense. Where is mother? He wants mother.

Only mother ever wanted him. If only he had died instead. If only she had taken him with her.

But her hands are petting his hair back from his face—cold hands, but so gentle. It has been so long since he felt this touch, or any touch, besides the possessive groping of his father as he paced the library and quizzed his unwanted progeny.

Victor tries clumsily to trap a hand there, against his cheek. She'll go soon, and she won't come back, because he failed her. He never conquered death, like he'd promised. Like he thought he was destined to. She will go and stay dead, and he will be all alone, for everyone else is dead, too.

"Please don'—please don't leave me."

"…Never, Victor. So long as you live, you will never be alone."

He feels himself smiling, straining chapped lips and dry cheeks, but the relief is stronger than the pain, and mother lays him down again and curls around him, and holds him as he falls asleep.

Chapter Text

Victor dreams of fire.

He dreams of his angel, and his mother, and his lost Elizabeth.

He dreams of mismatched hands, mismatched eyes, and a voice felt more in his bones than heard.

There are moments of clarity, but they are scattered and random, and so hard to pick out among the vivid dreams. Flickers of travel, of being held, of fires and disgusting tasting teas, of conversations half-heard, half-felt against his side.

And then one morning, he awakes, exhausted, famished, sore, but mostly coherent.

And the devil is there, cupping his neck and holding a spoon to his lips.

Victor feels locked inside his own body as his abomination pauses, then draws the spoon away. He stares into its eyes and realizes with growing dread that it sees him, in turn.

It releases him. Victor expends what little energy he has regained by scrambling back out beyond its reach. This takes him off the bed entirely, onto freezing stone, but he will suffer it to maintain the distance.

"How—h-how, how, I—"

"Killed me?" it asks, mildly.

"Yes."

Wet, all down his hands and the back of his neck, and the sounds, and he hadn't stopped until—how could it possibly—

The monster sets the spoon back into a wooden bowl, which is then placed on an awaiting table, barely tall enough to meet its knee

But there is more there on the little table. Victor's eyes catch on a knife, narrow and slightly curved. A boning knife, if he isn't mistaken, and he really doubts that he is.

He'd used one just like it on a myriad of human corpses, both for studying dissections, and in preparation of building his masterpiece.

"Get back into bed, Victor," the living dead thing before him says. "Do it, now…or I will make you."

It is not dead. It is not dead, and it—it found him, and has brought him here, where ever the hell here is. And the effort of putting even a little distance between he and it has winded him, he is unwell, and even if he weren't, he has no hope of running without his other leg, he's been stripped out of his suit, shoes—his coat is there, laid across the bedding he had just staggered free of, but the rest are gone. He is crouched on unfamiliar stone, half naked and impaired, and his terrible creature should be a headless stain in a cave, but it is here, alive and staring at him with—

"Get back into bed."

Victor's body moves without his say, some primal part of his brain taking hold and obeying without question, damning his pride. He even pulls the bedding back in around him, as if he could win some sort of favor by going above and beyond the orders given.

The monster seems less than impressed. It sighs, and turns to consider the contents of the table; a cup, the bowl, the knife. It takes up the knife.

"No—no, no, please." It falls from Victor's lips, mindlessly. He's been reduced to an animal, prey, trembling and cornered.

"It isn't for you," says the demon. But it leans forward and grabs him by the hand and tugs him to the edge of the bed closest to it. And then—then it presses the handle of the blade to his palm and all he can do is stare. "You did not listen," it is saying, as it forces his fingers to close around the handle. "So I will show you."

"I—I don't—u-understand—"

The creature closes its other hand around his around the knife and scoots forward to the edge of its chair.

"You know where to put this," it gives his captive hand a little tug, "to kill me. Do it."

This…this doesn't make sense.

"I don't—I-I don't—"

"Do me one grace; make it a quick death."

Victor knows he is trembling, but the creature's hands are sure and steady and strong as it draws him forward to place the blade at its sternum. He swallows and, knowing not what else to do but give the thing what it asks for, tries to guide the knife-point between the costal cartilage of the fifth and sixth rib and angle it so it will pierce the heart. The creature allows this, and when he goes still, it asks him, "Here?"

"Y-yes," Victor stammers. This feels like a dream. This feels like a nightmare.

His creation holds his gaze, his trapped hand, and pushes itself forward onto the blade. Victor is helpless to watch it impale itself. It does it with such…quiet grace. There is no cry of pain, even as he recognizes the signs of it around the eyes, the mouth. It is stoic and assured, and in the face of it, Victor is filled with such horror.

And he must sit with that horror, as the creature releases him to collapse in its chair. It gurgles and coughs, the blood that spills from its mouth so stark and red against its white skin, and it stares at him, in him, through him, as the life he placed inside it begins to fade.

It is dead in minutes.

Victor sits, frozen, a specimen trapped to card stock with a carefully placed array of pins. What is he to do but wait for it to…come alive again?

It must. It survived what he was certain—but he hadn't looked, he never truly verified—but the blood. The sound of bone breaking and wet matter being pulverized. He'd even waited for the breathing to stop.

And it was so sure. It had—it had planned this, selected the knife and had it there at hand for when Victor reclaimed his faculties. This is a demonstration.

This is it proving a point.

"I cannot die!" it had cried that night, "and I cannot live alone."

He hadn't listened. And why would he have--giving it life eternal was only a theory, and an untested one at that. He had not kept his sights so high, once the work truly began; bringing the dead back was impossible enough! And it is made from—how could it possibly—

The advanced healing, yes, that was expected, but it still wildly outpaced his expectations. Skin drawing together and closing within minutes, leaving not so much as a trace. No scarring, nothing, as if it had never bled at all. But this was no mere wound, this was a mortal blow, and it has expired entirely, before him!

…why is it taking so long for it to revive? Are mortal wounds more taxing than the rest? He must have—the lightning, some property of it, when channeled into the lymphatic system, it had converted into energy unending?

He's created a demi-god. A true son of Zeus. Prometheus begetting Heracles.

…could this be done to living men? Could he—

No, what is he thinking? He doesn't want unending life, he can barely suffer the life he has now. As frightened as he is of pain, of torture, of the obvious processes that would end in his death, Victor still has nothing to live for.

Only this thing. This thing he cannot kill.

…perhaps if he tore the lymphatic system out of it at such a pace it could not regenerate itself? Perhaps with help. There are more than few undergraduates that he's endeared himself to, a small flock of ardent admirers that he's been neglecting since his own expulsion. If he stationed one at each limb and a fifth at the head, while he focused on the center mass—

His thoughts are scattered by the sound of something hitting the floor.

…it is the knife.

Of course. Of course it is. The human body can expel a foreign object if given enough time. Of course his creation would do the same in under half an hour.

He should be timing this. Where are his clothes—he had his grandfather's pocket watch on him, it should still be in the inner pocket of his tailcoat.

Victor's eyes dart around the room, finding wooden walls dotted with lozenge windows with frosted, mismatched colored panes. The fireplace to the creature's back is lit and well stocked, a store of dry, cut wood there beside it. A long table pushed to one wall with a bench for seating, implying meals set for many and not just two. This is a family's home.

…there is also what looks to be blood dried into the grit between stone slabs. Claw marks—a dog, or—certainly not a wolf? His eyes dart around, searching for more clues, some piece of evidence to draw it all into context.

The most he can find from his vantage point is what looks like fur caught in the rest of the dusting, pushed to and forgotten in the nearest corner.

It could still simply be a dog. And the blood from butchering animals. And yet, there is something disquieting about this place.

…of course, there is a dead man not a foot from him, presently. That may be skewing his impression of things a touch.

Victor is still trying to locate his effects when the corpse in the chair suddenly stirs with a sharp, pained gasp. Its hand shoots to its breast, where the blade had been, and it curls over its knees with a wet cough. It coughs again, then spits. A fat clot of blood hits the floor. It wipes at its chin, but the blood there, expelled as it was dying, has long since dried.

"Does it hurt?" Victor hears himself ask.

"…you ask me if dying hurts?" It asks, incredulous.

"No; the coming back."

It considers the question a moment, then nods. "In more ways than one."

"How many times have you died? Do you know?"

His creation stares at him with an altogether too familiar mix of disgust and confusion. That of his peers, the counsel, his brother--

"You set up a demonstration and did not expect there would be questions?" Victor pushes.

"I. Yes. I—I assumed most would find it—"

"Oh, it was horrifying," Victor says, getting ahead of it before it can direct the conversation away from what interests him most. "You've a flair for the dramatic I would not have granted you, had I not been forced to act as assistant to it. But you've not thought this through. Where are my clothes? I've a pocket watch—I could have timed it, with more forewarning."

The creature stammers with clear upset before managing; "I did nnnot show you it for—for entertainment!"

"I am not asking you to entertain me," Victor snaps, "I am asking, as a scientist—"

"I am a person, Victor," it cries in reply. "Not a—a thing to be studied!"

"Oh, don't be ridiculous;" Victor says with a roll of his eyes, "that is exactly what you are."

"To you, yes!" It agrees, angrily. "I see that, now, yes! But you are not the master here, Victor. This place is not my cell. And I did not show you the evil at the heart of your creation to inspire your scientific curiousity."

Sluggishly at first and then with growing haste, fear settles back around Victor like a mantle.

"I showed you so you would know you cannot escape me."

…ah.

That is the consequence of this, isn't it? Even if he was granted another opportunity to kill it and escape, he would only be buying himself a brief head start. What worth is that when he's no idea where he is or where to go? Who could possibly shield him from an undying monster capable of bending steel? Who would dare try?

No one.

It has made its point well, for Victor understands now that escape is impossible. He will only be released should it tire of him, but it is more likely, he fears, that death will find Victor first.

Chapter Text

They sit in a heavy silence for what feels like several minutes.

Victor would be able to say how long exactly, had his pocket watch been at hand, but alas, he is still bereft of a time piece.

In the silence, his creation watches him intently, no doubt seeking in his countenance some proof he has internalized its latest lesson. Well…he has. If it expects him to cry about it, it will be sorely disappointed. He's too exhausted to indulge in such hysterics. He's recovering from exposure for God's sake.

A log on the fire gives a quite violent crackle. This startles the creature badly; it's almost halfway out of its chair before it's realized the sound's origin.

"Nervous? Are we?" Victor asks.

"…we are—are not supposed to be here." It rises to its feet and approaches the fire to procure a small caldron set beside it, no doubt full of freshly melted snow. Then, using its ratty scarf as a wash cloth, begins cleaning the blood from its face.

"And where, pray tell, is 'here'?"

The creature pauses in its tidying, eyes fixed to the middle distance. There is something that passes through its expression that Victor cannot name—a tightness around the eyes he could almost mistake for grief, before it thins its lips and regains its composure. "A friend's cottage, not far from home."

Now that is a surprising answer. Friends? Home?

"…you've made friends." Victor attempts to keep his skepticism mild. "And…where are they?"

It does not look at him, just deepens its frown and returns to the chair to sop up the rest of the evidence of its suicide from the wood and floor. "He has passed."

"At your hand?"

Its dark eyes flash in his direction, black lips curled back in a snarl. "No," it hisses, the word echoed by something far more animalistic rumbling out from within its chest.

So easily riled. It really must work on that, if it intends to keep him.

"He was…h-he was set upon by wolves."

Victor snorts. "Nonsense. Wolves avoid people—or was your friend in their territory, hunting game, perhaps?"

"He was here." The creature lets its scarf fall into the water, where it kneads it pensively, and again avoids his gaze. "His sons were out hunting the wolves, fffor late in the fall, the wolves came for their sheep."

"I truly doubt—"

"I am not lying," it snaps. It begins wringing its scarf with such fervor, Victor expects to see it rip it in halves. "I lived here, and…and for a time I was even wwwelcome."

"But there was a time when you were not." Does it realize it leaves him these openings? He doubts it, considering the sour disposition it adopts in answer.

It leaves, then, scarf thrown haphazardly onto the fireplace mantel, and caldron in hand. It needn't open the door far to empty the bloodied water and replace it with a fresh helping of snow, but it seems to want its distance, and so quits the cottage entirely.

This leaves Victor to his own devices. Unbidden, his eyes stray to the claw marks scored into the stone floor, not far from the bed.

It's ridiculous. Wolves don't just attack people! It would be a waste of energy. They'd have to be desperate, possibly already starving.

…why is he even entertaining this nonsense? He is starving, and should be seeing to his own needs, not indulging the incoherent fantasies of the weak-minded.

Victor retrieves the bowl from the side table and begins inspecting the contents. The soup is watery, with a cooked grain of some kind collecting at the bottom, and little pieces of…something brown scattered there-in. With some reluctance, Victor fishes one of these scraps out with his spoon to get a better look. It could be dried meat, rationed for the winter. It does smell quite salty…

…it's a terrible cut, whatever it is. Still stringy and tough—perhaps his creation did not let it cook long enough. He'll have to monitor it when next it sets about preparing their meals. He doubts it knows much at all in terms of proper nutrition, but it will have to learn. These are the responsibilities one takes on when they take another hostage.

…is that how he's to survive this? With humor? It is not the worst way to cope, and may have the added benefit of infuriating his captor…

Victor has finished the soup, and the cup of water left beside it, by the time his creation returns to the cottage. He is reminded of how it retreated from him, before, their first day of this awful little arrangement. How he'd nearly provoked it to violence, but it had stayed its hand, and left to pace among the trees. Victor had not considered it strategy, then, and…there's really nothing that says it's strategy now. Except…it does seem much calmer and composed, as it returns the caldron to the hearth to melt its fresh belly full of snow.

"…I hid in the mill, with the mice," the creature says, more to the fire than to Victor. "I had died, trying to escape your fire. I awoke on the shore, and bbbegan wandering the woods. I fffound bones, and clothes, this coat—"

"Ah," says Victor. That's why it has the military cut. "Then you've met your brothers."

Its eyes snap to his, wide with alarm.

"You found the soldiers I did not use to make you," he pronounces, slowly.

To his surprise, his creation looks stricken by this revelation. It almost staggers in its attempt to retake its chair. When prodded for an explanation, it says simply, voice small and trembling; "there were so many."

"I selected for you only the best," Victor says, beginning to think he should take insult with this...completely unwarranted reaction. "Unblemished skin, healthy muscle. Strong bones. …come now, you needn't take this so badly; they did not die to make you. They died for their country, and now, a select few even live on," he gestures to the creature, "in you."

His creation lifts its hand first to its throat, to trace the scar over its thyroid cartilage, then along the thin line of its transplanted sternocleidomastoid. It skirts the inferior edge of its mandible, then travels up its cheek to brush the scarring there, outlining its zygomatic arch.

"Did…you learn thhheir names?"

"No?" Why on Earth would he waste time doing that?

"…th…they were just parts to you."

Oh no. Oh no, has he's gone and upset it? Oh, boo. And it is his own fault, really, for not considering it may find his methods distasteful when he was creating life from death. A perfectly normal thing every man does, and not an entirely new science he—

Why is he getting upset about this? Why is he allowing this—this murderer to shame him about his methods?

"Must we?" he asks it, mirroring its distaste back to it. "Were you not explaining—it was how you found this place, wasn't it? You came to the mill and…" he indulges in making a dismissive gesture its way, "made friends of the vermin…"

At least it's glaring at him again. Better that than the quiet horror it seemed lost in, before.

"I could not speak," it tells him. "I had not learned," and who's fault was that? Not his! "And could not explain to the people here I meant no harm. Only mmmy friend knew of me; his eyes could not see, but they were full of such wisdom. He explained to me that the loss of one sense enhances the others. He heard me, where the others did not." It turns its sharpened gaze upon him, and Victor instinctively raises his chin in reply. "He taught me what you did not."

Oh—how dare it—

"I tried. I tried my damnedest to find some speck of intellect in you, but there was none! You just parroted my name back to me, over and over—"

"You punished me for learning a second," it replies, hitting the consonants hard in its anger.

"I did not—"

"One new word, you said, and you would save me!" The creature leans forward and taps its brow rapidly, "I have retraced the memory now a hundred fold; what you said, how it was said—I gave you a second word, and you showed yourself a liar."

This is—

How is he supposed to—

"It—is not that simple—"

"Because it was her name?"

The question wraps itself around his ribs and squeezes.

"Don't—" Victor warns, and is ignored.

"I was punished for learning her name."

"She—she was not yours to—"

"Nor was she yours." And it says it with such finality. And it is true, he knows it is true, but he hates that it is true, and he hates his awful creation for throwing it in his face, like it has any right.

"She was not of this world," it continues, the statement so odd it manages to pull Victor free of his self-loathing, simply to gawk at it. "She felt no kinship here, so as much as I hate what you did, I cannot damn you for it. Not in her name."

"You're speaking nonsense."

"It is what she told me, with her last breaths."

"Enough," Victor cries. "Do not speak of her to me! Never speak of her to me!"

It neither agrees nor refuses him, simply stares at him with…it isn't a smirk, but there is a hint of caustic pride in the angle of its mouth. It considers itself the winner of that exchange, no doubt. Had baited him intentionally? How like the devil to prod at a fresh and festering wound. Well. If it is to draw its satisfaction from goading him so, he must endeavor to deny it at every turn.

"You—you said before," Victor begins once he's choked down his rage, latching quickly to a suitable change in subject, "we are near 'home'. You have no 'home'."

The creature pours itself a cup of the fresh ice melt; "I have a ruin."

"You mean the tower—you've no intention—there's nothing left."

His creation meets his eye with a certainty he is growing to loath. "We will make do with what remains. We cannot stay here for more than the night." Then, as it is engrossed in arranging the caldron to its satisfaction, it adds; "And we will revisit your notes."

That startles such a laugh from him, Victor's voice cracks. "We will? Will we?" he asks it, mockingly. "My notes are ASH! I ensured it!"

"Just as I survived," it tells him, infuriating in its steady cadence, "so too have the instructions to make me."

"Impossible."

It is, without question, mistaken.

Chapter Text

This is absurd.

Seven errant sketches, the entirety of his sketchbook, Harlander's camera, a handful of his negatives, including the portrait of the experiment mid-assembly—

And that is just what his creature found with a cursory glance! Over a month ago, by its recollection!

And oh, how had it found him, the night of the wedding? Hmm? Why, by reading the address on his summons from the Royal Medical Society, of course!

All of it—All of it should have been soot and ash, blown into the lake back in August as he intended!

It is as if reality itself has made an enemy of him! Set out to mock him, and—and—and conspire against him—

The summons—the summons. How? He distinctly remembers tossing it onto his kerosene drenched research! By what manner of devilry—

—and William and Elizabeth dead, because of it. Because he had been careless. Sloppy. Tried to destroy it all in one go, too eager to be rid of the millstone 'round his neck to check his damned work. The tower was destroyed, certainly, but not the monster it held. Not the research that created that monster. Not the summons that would lead the monster back to them, on the night William and Elizabeth were to be bound by holy matrimony.

All of it, for nothing.

All of it…all of it, all Victor's fault.

They had reached the tower ruins by midday. It was much as he'd expected; a depressing shell of its former glory, cleaved down to the quick. Winter had all but reclaimed it, layering all the debris in a white shroud. The only distinguishable form, at a glance, was a corpse of one battery splayed down the left side of the stairs, its frame frosted over and beginning to rust.

A year ago, verging on two, he had stood before the tower's majesty and felt a certainty grip him that this place was destined to be his. Destined to be where he would finally conquer death.

Now…

Now, he sits in an alcove to shield himself from the wind, in the crumbling wreckage of that tower, the proof of his hubris in a growing pile at his feet. And his living failure, his truest mistake, wandering around the ruins, digging yet more embarrassments out of the snow to bring to him.

Victor retreats.

The afternoon comes, and the pile is larger.

He retreats again.

It is verging on evening, now. At the top of the pile is a chunk of wood, only recognizable by the warped lines of silver stretching over its length. Once, the silver traced the lines of the lymphatic system, meant to align with the left arm. Now, the silver has wept from where it was inlaid and hardened again, pooling unevenly here, running too thin there. Utterly useless for its intended purpose, now.

They could perhaps rip the silver out and sell it.

"Victor."

He flinches, and curls a little tighter into his coat.

"Come—I've found a way inside."

…a way—what?

The creature gives him no time to argue, simply pulls him to his feet—and how kind it had been, returning his prosthetic to him that morning, truly it holds the heart of a saint—and drags him from his hiding spot to march him past the center stairs, and—

No.

No, no, no.

The stairs to the gutted pump rooms are intact.

What is little more than rubble at ground level reveals itself to be nearly untouched below it. The pillars stand strong, unflinching in their duty to hold up the vaulted ceiling, scorched black all down its center, but whole. The many apertures to the rooms above have been plugged by either snow or debris, but that giant, singular shaft in the middle stands unimpeded, ignoring the skeleton of another battery crumpled in its center, ringed by shattered green glass.

The room he'd started to think of as the creature's cell lays before them, changed in some ways and yet entirely the same.

He is in a nightmare.

No, he is in Hell.

He sits where he is placed. Not on the platform where he once caged his creation, but in a clean corner, shielded somewhat from the chill. Soon, there is a fire. Before the sun sets, the creature relocates everything it has decided holds worth down into the cell with them.

It forces bread and jerky upon him, bullies him into eating it. He cannot taste it—only ash and kerosene. Only failure.

Then, then, the horrid thing sits beside him and forces his sketchbook into his lap.

Victor's grief mutates suddenly and violently into a rage. He snarls, snatches the sketchbook up and tosses the stupid thing as far from them as he can.

"Never, I said!" he wails to his captor. "Never!"

The demon sighs, pushes to its feet and leaves him to collect the discarded sketchbook.

"And even if I wanted to," Victor continues, unable to stop now that his silence has broken, "I cannot! I haven't the means! The resources! You've—you haven't the slightest idea how expensive it was to bring you into the world, the months of planning, renovating, building—It is not possible! Do you hear me?! It. Cannot. Be done!"

The creature pauses, sketchbook already in hand, to regard him with its brow drawn low in distrust.

"…you are a Baron," it states, slowly. As if that should disqualify all he's explained to it. Clearly it knows only the prestige expected from the title, and not the reality!

"Yes," Victor agrees, viciously, "a disgraced one! I haven't a fortune to give you! Even if we were to—to return to the estate and sell every fixture down to the last candlestick, it would not be enough!"

This further confuses his creation. It looks from him, to the warped metal frame at the center of the room, and back, asking, "Then hhhow did you do it?"

"How does any artist create beyond their means? I had a patron! Someone rich, and not just rich, but with connections. Do you know where he is now? Hmm?" Victor gives it a moment, then impatiently delivers the answer; "Dead! He is dead! Everyone, all of them, all DEAD!"

And Harlander was just the money. The true backbone of the project had been William. He'd relied on him for everything, everything, forcing on him all that Victor did not wish to do himself. And William had excelled. Every aspect, all of it, down to the last detail, all of it manufactured to Victor's specifications.

He cannot do it again without William. Good, trustworthy, dependable William.

Victor has curled into himself again, and begun to sob.

His brother's dying words ring in his ears.

You are the monster.

You are the monster.

It all came from you.

You

are

the

monster.

"…you…lost a friend?"

It is at his side again, hand raised, poised for what, Victor does not know, but it is too close and he does not want to be touched.

"No, you imbecile," he spits, pushing that reaching hand away, "I lost my brother! Murdered, o-on the night of his wedding, by you."

The creature flinches, black eyes gone wide, and he feels nothing. There is no satisfaction in how it retreats from him. There is no escaping his own mind, and where it endeavors to take him.

"He was the only one of us who was any good," Victor continues, unbidden, "The sun, blemished by my storm. And…she loved him. O-or she chose him, and that is what matters. Mattered. None of it matters now; they're gone. Both of them, gone, and all because…all for my…useless, pointless, wicked obsession!"

He holds his head, fists his hands in his hair and pulls, just to feel a different kind of pain. For he is a coward. He has earned this pain, but he cannot bear it.

"Oh, how I wish I could blame you. But you are my monster. My madness given form. And my…my finger…on the trigger…"

It cannot die. It told him, and he didn't listen, and the bullet would not have done anything anyway. She died for nothing. He killed her for nothing.

"Oh, Elizabeth. Forgive me, please, please forgive me. Please."

She will not. Nor will God, if He even concerns Himself with the likes of Victor, after his blasphemy. He has sinned recklessly and without apology, and cursed Holy God's name at every opportunity, never considering perhaps he deserved all his miseries. That it was written, on the day of his birth, that he would suffer, and it would be just, for he will only ever bring ruin down upon all who would know him.

He wants to throw himself to the lake, be consumed and forgotten.

He cannot go on like this. He cannot live with himself.

Large arms framed by furs close around him, and he hasn't the strength or will to fight back. He is drawn against his creation's chest, and held, and as it rests its cheek upon his crown, he says, "I wish you would just kill me."

"I know," it says.

It continues to hold him, and Victor continues to cry.

For a time, there is only its breathing and his grief, until it shifts to murmur against his hair; "You have found solace in me before; in sickness, in sleep. There is some part of you I do not offend. Find it, Victor."

It is more than a 'part'. So much of him screams for comfort, any comfort, and has been given none, for he fears if given any, the need for more would utterly consume him. It is endless. There is no bottom, only hunger. Such hunger. And this hole inside him was once filled so effortlessly by his mother, but now it has grown beyond all hope of ever being satisfied.

Once, he had purpose. A goal to strive for. He gave himself to it readily, for it was the only thing that could distract him from the wanting. And then he met Elizabeth, and for the first time he began to believe he could be whole again, if only he could keep her gaze upon him. If only she would touch him, praise him, allow him to know her. He would have given all to her; body and soul.

But she did not choose him.

And who would? He is not a person, but a bottomless pit that only knows how to take, and take, and take.

"I do not keep you only to punish you. You are my companion, and I am yours."

The words, the declaration, pierces to the core of him, and inspires from Victor a wounded, animalistic keen. He can't—he can't—he simply can't—

The arms keep him locked in place. Slowly, his creation begins to rock. Why does that simple motion bring such comfort?

It doesn't know what it's doing to him. It cannot. It does not know that it is offering something he will never return, and never tire of. He does not know how he will survive it. Just this, just this, makes him feel so fragile he might shatter.

"Curse me, come morning," his creature instructs. "Now; accept what comfort I can give, and sleep."

He is unworthy.

He is captive.

He is so afraid.

His creation leaves him no choice in the matter. He holds Victor until his tears dry and the exhaustion left in their wake overpowers him.

That part, that void in Victor sings in triumph. The hunger will be insatiable now. It will reshape him to suit it, and he will lose himself.

…and really what of value would be lost?

Chapter Text

The next three—or maybe five days, he honestly wasn't keeping track—are a blur of tantrums, and tears, and intentional isolation.

For Victor, that is.

His creation is rarely in the cell with him. Only around for meals and to sleep through the night, Victor trapped in his arms until sunrise.

'Trapped'.

No, he's—he has enough to contend with, he's not—all of that will have to wait, for...It will just have to wait.

While he refuses to interrogate it, Victor is very aware something had shifted between them, that night. He hasn't been talking to his creation, but when together, Victor is rarely far from his grasp. This has led to the creature taking certain liberties, and Victor…has not argued nor refused them.

He tries so very hard not to think about it, because if he begins to think about it, he'll have to justify to himself all of the nonsense he's let the creature get away with, and he fears there is no justification for it at all, and it should all stop. That he must insist on it all stopping.

So, much easier to only…sort of be there when that hulk of a man comes to sit beside him, and begins with the…with the touching.

They both reek. Victor hates it, hates the grit he can feel between his skin and clothing, hates the beard that seems to be growing bushier and more wild by the day, hates how his greasy hair clings around his ears and cheeks, and the itch all across his scalp.

His creation seems to delight in touching all of it, especially Victor's hair and beard. It is what he goes to first, most any time he breaks from digging through the snow and returns to Victor's side. And Victor closes his eyes and empties his mind and gives himself to the animal hunger inside him, ravenous for such affection. He does not speak, he does not shy away from the touch, and he does not Think about it.

Victor tries to keep his bouts of madness in the face of his grief to when he is left alone, but he has found if he is too loud, his creation will abandon his work to return to him. It—That—

He isn't Thinking About It.

But that revelation was almost too much, so he has endeavored since to only be insane in a quiet way.

The other night, Victor actually managed a few words for his creation, explaining how crying leads to dehydration. Since then, the thing is nearly obsessed with checking that Victor has fresh water at hand. Of course he does. They're surrounded by snow. And the implication made by the frequency of these check-ins have left Victor almost resolute in crying no longer.

And then, there are their food reserves. His creation does not eat, and even rationing it to a meal a day, Victor has just about burned through all he had stolen from the cottage. Now the creature is actively looking for any cache food that might have survived the explosion and resulting months, despite Victor's protests that he will not find any.

The small colony of mice that share the cell with Victor are in danger of becoming their next meal and honestly? Victor would rather starve.

It is this looming threat, and the disgusting state of them both, and, yes, even the growing shame at spending days on end crying and cursing his whole existence, all of it has spurred Victor into making a decision.

"We leave here come morning," he says as his creature arranges them to his liking. He has already shaken the snow from his shoulders and warmed his hands by the fire—the only way Victor would allow him to touch any bare skin—and has caged Victor into his lap, taken one of his hands and begun tracing each metacarpus and proximal phalanx across the dorsal side. Delicately.

"We will?" the creature asks, and there is only a hint of challenge in his tone. Victor suspects he is willing to be swayed toward the idea.

"Yes—To go to Vaduz."

"What is fad—Fed—"

"Fah-Doots. Vaduz."

"What is it?"

"A city. And from there, we'll catch a train. You've found more than enough silver to pay our way."

"…I have?"

"Yes. In fact," Victor gives the arms encasing him a rapid series of pats, until he is freed, "some of it will need to be broken down into smaller bits."

Once released, Victor does something he has not done in perhaps a full week. He approaches the pile of mistakes his creation has been adding to, day after day.

He keeps his focus only on the pieces either inlaid with silver or made of it entirely. It seems his creation noticed the correlation himself, as they are already helpfully grouped together.

"These," Victor says, motioning to them. "You'll rip the silver free—"

"Silver," his creation echoes in a murmur likely only meant for his own ears, as he kneels and begins tracing the ruined lymphatic system still joined to the wood.

"Yes, silver—it's a perfect conductor, but we will use it because it is also money."

His creation looks to him, hums in agreement, nods for good measure, and then begins working his fingers under a fat drop of silver, intent on leveraging it from its home.

"I have not seen trains. I have read of them," he says, as he works and Victor watches from where he's retreated, closer to the fire.

"They're big, and loud, and the smoke they produce is nigh unbearable, but we've a considerable distance to cross, and they will be cheaper than a coach."

"Coach," comes the quiet echo. The snap of wood relinquishing its engraving. Then; "where are we going?"

"Edinburgh. I've property there and a small bit of savings."

His creation turns to look at him, worry in his eyes.

"I cannot escape you, so you're coming with me," Victor states, plainly. "If anyone asks, you found me dying in the woods and have been nursing me back to health."

"…but I have," comes the confused reply.

"Yes, but we are leaving out the part about," Victor waves his hand unhelpfully, "everything before that."

"…people will—won't—I. I still—" his creation stammers.

"People will what?" Victor presses. "Look at you?"

"Fear me," is the quiet answer.

"Yes, but you are a veteran, and should be respected for your service."

He seems to consider this, his attention to his work slowing to a halt before he abandons it entirely. "Victor," he says, as he crosses back to kneel before his creator.

Victor draws in a breath and attempts to keep his annoyance out of his tone; "Yes, what is it?" There's something turning over in that mind—hopefully he won't have to spend too much time teasing it out. Victor thinks he's been remarkably civil for a man just coming off a stint of grief induced madness. It would be a pity to lose his temper, now.

"…men have names."

…oh.

"…yes. Yes, they do. Have you chosen one?"

"I…I thought they were given."

"Ah, only sometimes," Victor says. His creation continues to look to him expectantly, and he sighs. Well. It isn't as though he hasn't picked one out. "'Adam'. How's that? Do you like that?"

"Yes…" his creation says, as a fragile joy breaks slowly over his face. Victor has to look away.

"Then that is what you're called," Victor says, hoping it will be the end of the matter.

Chapter Text

It is not the end of the matter, for the newly named Adam insists on pulling Victor into a tight embrace.

Victor can feel Adam smiling against his wild mess of curls.

Victor goes elsewhere until the embrace ends.

It is, thankfully, a short hug, as far as hugs from his creation goes. When Adam pulls back, his smile has waned somewhat, the corners twitching like he's trying to keep it up and slowly losing the fight. Victor forces a smile of his own and pats Adam's shoulder. That seems to be enough to soothe the man. His smile brightens.

Victor looks away.

Adam returns to his work picking the silver out of the remnants of the table that channeled life eternal into his lymphatic system. Victor considers telling him this, but another thought quickly bullies its way to the forefront.

He's about to take Adam into a city. Several cities, depending on how many times their journey necessitates switching trains. Oh God, how in the world is he to make this work?

"Adam," he says—and he really should have known his creation would perk up like a damned puppy at being called for by name. Well, regardless, Victor once again has his attention, and so explains; "we have to discuss…expectations while on our trip."

"Expec…" but Adam trails off, leaving Victor wondering if he is not familiar with the word. "What kind?"

Oh, good, he understands the concept at least. Victor was not looking forward to playing the role of personal dictionary, again. But now; how to explain?

"The way you. The way you touch me. My hair, my." It is entirely platonic, just say it, it is not strange, it is only strange if Victor makes it strange, so he just needs to say it. "M-my body. You can't do that on the train—anywhere we could be seen."

Adam shifts to face him entirely, looking very put out by the idea. "Why?"

"Because it is not how men conduct themselves," Victor explains.

This response is considered, but Adam's frown only seems to deepen. "…my friend was a man, and he allowed me to—to embrace him, and hhhold his hand. During walks."

"Yes," Victor begins, "but he was blind, didn't you say?"

"Yes."

"Then you were acting as his guide. I am in no need of—"

"You've your missing leg."

…oh, damn him.

Victor has to force his eyes elsewhere so not to glare directly at his creation.

"…fine, yes, fine;" no, the tone is too harsh, ease up. "Helping with my balance will be allowed, but. We should practice so you do it correctly." As he returns his gaze to the creature to gauge his reaction, a second problem presents itself, and he adds; "And you should work on not doing that…thing…with your hands."

"…thing?"

"Yes, the." Victor motions at Adam's hands, and his arms, really—who holds their arms at an angle like that? "The. You're doing it right now." Another wave toward those oddly extended digits as Adam slowly, almost methodically, curls and uncurls his fingers, palm turning this way and that.

"I'm doing what?" Adam asks, as he squints at Victor like he's the strange one.

"The hand—movement."

Now Adam is frowning outright. "…you move your hands all the time."

"Yes, but—this is different."

Visibly annoyed at where this conversation has gone, Adam turns back to his work, shooting "I think you are wrong, Victor," to his creator from over his shoulder.

"I am not—you'll see. Look at the hands of other people when we get to the city, look at how they hold themselves—you'll only draw more attention to yourself if you can't be normal."

Why is this upsetting? Victor is trying to help. People always do this, and he never understands why. They are always more annoyed he acknowledged the problem, it never seems to matter that he's also providing a solution to it.

"…it is possible I cannot be," Adam says, after a moment's silence.

"Yes, but you are still going to try. Aren't you?"

"Hmm."

Oh, good God. This will be a disaster. No, no wait, perhaps there is a way to persuade him.

"…Adam," Victor says, doing his best to keep any annoyance or anger out of his tone; "this will already be a very stressful journey."

Adam is silent long enough that Victor fears his gambit was deployed in vain. But then, a quiet answer comes; "…yes, I will try."

"Good. Thank you."

He knew it. Victor knew if he used his name, the positive correlation would ease him into agreement. A very useful tool indeed, but he must be careful not to over use it. It must appear naturally within the conversation, or his creation will realize it's being wielded strategically, and then not only will he be cross with Victor, he'll go out of his way to deny Victor his desired outcome.

It's…it's so odd to consider his creation as strong-willed. Victor had expected the violence—perhaps not when or how it was enacted, more that it seemed inevitable with such an innate, inhuman strength. But Adam's mind, how it has matured in leaps and bounds since they parted ways, that he did not expect. While the manner in which his creature speaks is rough and at times he more trips over a word than pronounces it, what he says--the words he chooses to use--suggest he has experienced some education. The breadth of his vocabulary is something Victor can only guess at, but it continues to surprise him.

And he is so very stubborn. Not in the way of a disobedient child—how Victor saw him, before, on the occasions he could stomach thinking of him as a person at all—but that of a man. There is logic to his arguments, there is purpose. He acts in his own interest, but so does Victor.

And…he is all Victor has left.

So he's making do. Even if it is a bit of a—wait, what is that?

No.

No, it can't be.

As he'd considered his strange companion, Victor's eyes had begun to wander the side of the pile of mistakes not currently blocked by Adam's wide, fur cloaked back. It was just noise, really, visual noise while he mulled over the situation, but then his eye caught on something.

With the help of the nearest pillar, Victor climbs onto his feet and approaches.

And then, as he had done in childhood, every single night, he kneels.

Charred, disembodied, and dented badly in one cheek, is his angel.

How had it survived? Is this yet another joke at his expense, oh Mighty God? Have you not humbled him enough?

With shaking hands, Victor rescues the angel from the detritus caging it in. Its eyes still point skyward, refusing to meet his own. The set of the mouth so neutral as to be unreadable. It still has a bit of its hair at the top, though the crown has—

…wait.

"…Adam, a moment." Victor's voice is thin; he can't bring himself to look away from what is left of his angel.

"What is it?" There is the sound of Adam's clothes dragging across the floor—the man doesn't even bother to stand, just scoots closer on his rump to place himself at Victor's side. "Oh, the face?"

Victor says nothing. He simply lifts the angel high enough to properly compare the foreheads.

It's a God damned match.

"…that's what I thought." That is what he'd feared.

"What?" Adam leans forward to take in the angel's face, then looks to Victor, confused and curious.

Well, there's no hiding it now. "I—it was not intentional," Victor begins, "but I gave you the same—here." He turns the head to face his creation and points to indicate the crack along the forehead. Then, because they haven't a mirror, and that reason only, Victor reaches forward to trace the scar on Adam's forehead, attempting to explain with touch how the crack and his scar are the same shape, in the same place. "You both have it, see?"

Adam's eyes are wide. For the first time, Victor thinks he might genuinely be considering leaving Victor's reach. Something about this is upsetting to him. It takes him several seconds to force out the word; "…why?"

Why indeed.

Victor meant it when he said it was not intentional. He was thinking very little when assembling his opus; he was only the parts of himself that understood his task and would see it finished. Personal thoughts, even casual opinions, were pushed entirely aside. There was only The Work.

In truth, its his favorite place to be. He fears he was simply having too much fun, and did not question his hands as they made those cuts. It'd all seemed right in the moment.

Now…

Now he isn't sure what to think of it.

Adam calls his name softly, which means he's must have been silent longer than intended.

"A subconscious urge," Victor says. "And a choice made on too little sleep." Yes, we'll go with that. But that still does not explain the correlation, so he continues, "This, you see, this…is what put that obsession in me."

"…I don't understand," Adam says.

Victor considers how to even begin to explain his angel, and decides almost immediately that he cannot. Not right now. It is too big, and Victor is...He simply cannot.

"I'm tired, Adam," he says. Slowly, gently, Victor returns his angel's remains to the tiled floor. "Remind me and I may explain it tomorrow."

Chapter Text

For the rest of that night, there is little of note. Victor lays by the fire; Adam continues to dislodge silver one chunk at a time.

When there is no more currency to extract from wood, Adam is left with the two, fairly large pieces of the telescoping lightning rod to see to. When he turns to Victor for advice, Victor suggests heating it by the fire and then tearing it apart.

The sound this makes is not a pleasant one.

Men were not meant to rend silver with their bare hands.

But there are blessed moments of silence between each attempt to render the silver down to more manageable chunks, time where it is instead held over the flame to soften. Victor is half in a doze during one such intermission, and almost does not hear it, when Adam begins to recite something under his breath.

"I am Ozymandias. King of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

…Victor is certain he's quoting something, but it seems to be from a genre Victor prefers not to trouble himself with.

"I. Am Adam," his creation continues. "I am Adam."

This, Victor tells himself, is where he loses interest. So he turns to lie on his opposite side and truly commits to reaching unconsciousness.

Morning comes for him and is much like any other; Victor waking to Adam behind him, still held solidly against the creature's chest. It should perhaps bother him more that this is now routine.

Victor focuses on restocking the dying fire instead.

By mid-morning, they have pocketed all the chunks of silver—Victor with the lightest handfuls and Adam with the true bulk—and have left the Tower behind.

Thank God.

It will be a long march to Vaduz, likely two days at least, and that is if Victor is not mistaken about the direction. What they need to find is a road. The Tower has one but its neglect by the local principalities has resulted in that road going fallow and overgrown not far from the lake. Victor's hope is if they keep going East, they're bound to stumble upon some piece of human ingenuity to accept as their guide.

For this first day, and especially while they trek through the wood, Victor allows himself to be carried. He still intends to test and critique Adam's manners, ideally before they make contact with anyone else, but they are both aware he would be slower on foot, and would need more rest stops—or any rest at all.

So, to ensure a faster trip, he's back to being half tucked into Adam's coat, balanced in the crook of his creation's arm.

Victor is almost certain Adam prefers this arrangement entirely because of Victor's higher body temperature.

The great Baron and genius surgeon, Victor Frankenstein, reduced to a hand warmer.

Ugh.

"…will you tell me about the wooden face?"

The request comes not long after the tower's ruin has been entirely eclipsed by the trees behind them.

Despite still feeling ill-equipped to put to words the divine intervention upon which his life's work was painstakingly built, Victor decides to humor his creation and make an attempt.

"That head was once attached to the body of an angel," he begins, for it is the most obvious place to start. "Each night I would pray to it, as I had been instructed, and I thought very little of the ritual, just as I thought very little of God. Until the night it came to me, gave me a dream of it so…vivid, I awoke and threw myself at its feet."

A shiver runs through him that has nothing to do with the cold wind buffered somewhat by the surrounding forest nor his creation's coat.

His trust, his blind trust in what reached into him and planted the wicked ambitions within his chest—it is what damned him. For in truth, it was a demon who tempted him. He's certain of that, now, having seen the hateful thing's true face.

"It made me a promise, in that dream; I would have command over the forces of Life and Death. I would become every ounce the surgeon my father was; I would surpass him in ambition and in reach. …The vision was so clear…"

Even alluding to it leaves Victor breathless. The moment remains a fixed point in his mind. His awe, his gratitude, his newly acquired conviction, it all is still so tangible. It is still so hard for him to believe it was all a lie.

"…it told you to make me," Adam concludes.

"No—no, nothing so specific," Victor corrects. "I would have to tease the answers out myself. But I did. I did. …if only it had…"

Of only it had been good. If only Victor still had goodness in him.

But she died years before the angel made its promise.

"In truth," Victor admits in a voice only loud enough to carry to Adam's ears, "it did not start with the angel's visit. My obsession with conquering death began much earlier…with the loss of my mother. She died i-in childbirth. William—"

William.

The last piece of her in this world.

His brother's face, his words, they are more vivid than life. More real and terrible. The madness threatens to lock Victor there, in that memory, and he fists his hands in his hair to divide his attention and—and maybe escape a fresh spiral downward.

"No more," Victor says. Pleads. "No more, I cannot—"

Adam's other hand is almost colder than the ambient chill around them, but when he places it to Victor's cheek to guide him toward resting his head on Adam's shoulder, Victor submits without question nor complaint.

They spend much of their morning walk this way; Victor curled toward his creation, Adam slowly, gently combing his hand through his creator's hair.

When the sun has passed its zenith and begins to list behind them toward the Western horizon, they find a place shielded from the wind to rest for a time. Victor eats the last of the bread—the heel of the loaf, stale and slightly burnt, more crust really than bread—and instructs Adam to save the last of the jerky for tomorrow.

"Victor?"

"Mm?"

"…will you tell me more of your mother?"

He would really rather not.

"…what is it that you want to know?"

"You loved her."

"Yes." Of course he did. Of course. "Yes, with all my heart. She was a piece of me—or I of her. We—we completed one another."

…had he admitted this to anyone, before this moment? He doesn't think so. And it sounds odd, to his ears, to have his secrets spoken, limited by the minuscule scope of mere human words. The words aren't enough. They cannot encompass the—the true weight of her presence. Of its lack.

Still, Victor pushes on; "She would come to me after withstanding my father's rage—arguments so loud it carried through the walls—and I would comfort her. And when father was gone, she was mine."

Victor closes his eyes and allows his head to fall back onto the furred shoulder behind him.

"Her death…I thought she would never leave me."

"She was loving toward you."

"Yes." What sort of question is that? "Yes, of course she was. She was everything good—"

"And you know what it is to live without such love. You know the pain of it."

"…yes." Where is this going? Victor can sense Adam leading him somewhere, but he is hungry and cold and still a little crazy, and his mind fails him, and he cannot predict the intended destination.

"Yet you refused to love me."

Ah.

Victor straightens and gives an emphatic shake of his head. "That—no. This is different. We—our—it's simply different."

"How?" Asks Adam. His arms flex against Victor's sides, and Victor's eyes dart to his hands to find them dug into the frozen earth in front of them. Buried to the middle phalanx. "Did you have any other? Did I?"

Adam bares his teeth in a grimace—unbidden Victor is reminded of the night he was admonished by Elizabeth and sought to soothe his wounded ego by demanding obedience from his creation. Looking back now, he can see it clearly; his restraint, his fear. His pain. All mirrored in his face, here and now.

"What would your life have been," Adam asks, voice beginning to tremble, to fall further into his chest, edges colored by the inhuman growl that seems to bubble out of him during moments of heightened emotion, "if your mother beat you, chained you, deprived you of her company and then, one night, set your home ablaze in hopes to free herself of you?"

"This hypothetical is ridiculous," Victor argues, instinctively, "because my mother would never do such things."

"Then why did you?"

The question is damning, but the answer is so painfully obvious, he almost cannot get it out past his teeth fast enough.

"Because I am not my mother! Clearly!"

Victor finally pushes free of Adam's lap to sit before him, half turned away as yet more words spill forth. "Everything good in me died with her. And I have no excuse—I gave what I had to give, and it was as—as wicked as my determination to make you."

It wasn't even as much as his own father endeavored to give his first born and least loved.

…that's the truth of it, there. He is more his father's son than his mother's. And he has somehow surpassed his father in cruelty and neglect.

Victor retreats to escape himself.

The next thing he is aware of is cold fingers wiping hot tears from his cheeks. They're moving again. He is in Adam's arms again.

The guilt consumes him. The regret.

Why…

No, he hasn't the strength. He can't, he's too much of a coward.

But that 'why' will not release him. Even as he experiences the afternoon flicker into evening, one disjointed moment at a time.

Adam makes their fire. That is the only time he does not have Victor pressed to him. And when he returns to Victor and begins to guide him down, settling in behind him for their night's rest, the question, the 'why?', breaks through the last of Victor's meager defenses.

"…Why do you do this?" It leaves him in a strangled croak. "What comfort can you possibly gain?" Then, the truth, the ugly, unstoppable truth; "I would not crawl into my father's bed for anything, least of all comfort."

Adam's reply is given with such ease; "Must I live knowing none at all?" He tightens the bars of Victor's cage, pulling him more securely against him. Defiantly, he presses his face to Victor, half in his hair. Half against his neck. "No. I will take this poisonous thing between us, Victor, over its absence."

It…he…

It is what he wants and yet he knows in every bone, every nerve, he does not deserve it. Has not even begun to earn it.

"…and…" Adam's voice drops to a whisper, trembling now with the effort of his words; "despite it all…there is still love for you in my heart."

No. No, please, no.

"Love that I know you will not return."

Victor turns to hide his face in the dirty fur of his coat collar.

"I will suffer you regardless; I have the means to take what I desire, and I have. And the only one I hurt is you. Pain we both know you've earned."

Victor's pride, his disgusting pride, jumps to his throat and speaks for him, simply because there is an opportunity to argue. Simply because he can.

"Don't act so pious. It is not the justice you find satisfaction in, it is the pain." As if he were undeserving of his pain. "You have enjoyed isolating me, depriving me of all but you—you are no saint."

"Did you build me to be one?"

Touché.

Victor quiets, now that he's no opening to exploit. If only he could control himself—but he has never been skilled at that. And he would lie, to himself and others, that he simply does not consider modesty a virtue. As if he could contain himself if he did.

No. No, Victor is a slave to his emotions. The man of logic and reason is a ill fitting costume, a farce. He is truly little more than an animal, himself. Barely sentient. Reactive to pain.

"…had you any aspirations for me, creator?"

…well, this at least has a simple answer.

"No. There was only the work…and then it was done, and…I knew not what to do with myself."

"…would…"

There is a long pause. Victor waits. Stays. And wishes dearly that he had not, once Adam finds his voice again;

"Would you have loved me if I had…i-if I were somehow…different? Somehow better?"

…how terrible, that this is what they share. This question, that Victor has asked himself countless times, in countless ways. If he were fairer, father, would you love him? If he had more of your harsh features and less of mother's? If he submitted and did his studies and always knew the correct answer? Would he be worth loving then?

"...no."

He wishes he knew the words, but he cannot find them. Instead, he finds his creation's hand and clasps it tightly in his own. After a moment, the cold fingers squeeze in reply.

Victor musters a bit of strength. It is imperfect, his solution, little more than mimicry, but it will have to do for now.

"It's yours," Victor says. "This poisoned thing. It's already yours."

Adam's arms tighten. Victor is trapped.

Soon, they both find their way to sleep.

Chapter Text

"No. No, no, that won't do."

Adam frowns, looking between his hands and Victor, searching for something, though God only knows what.

He has done as Victor asked of him; arranged them both in what, to him, would be an appropriate way for them to walk together. Victor is unsurprised by the result, and yet still finds himself agitated by how far it is from a practical solution.

"How are you to take my weight when holding me there?" he asks, motioning to Adam's abysmal answer; Victor's right hand clasped between both of his creation's, held in place by the palms, as Adam insists on having his fingers splayed forward, contributing nothing to his grip.

Adam doesn't reply. He is sulking again, half hiding behind his filthy hair.

"You cannot," Victor pronounces. "Permit me." He does not wait for permission before he begins setting this right.

"If you wish to replace my cane, you must provide the same service. Placing weight on my missing leg is painful and rarely stable, even with my prothesis. Without assistance, I could cause myself harm in several ways, understand? Most of all, by losing my balance. A fall could result in a sprained or broken wrist, more damage to my leg, damage to my healthy leg, head and face—"

As he speaks, he bats Adam's right hand away and begins adjusting his left to Victor's needs. Set the arm at a 90 degree angle. Situate himself closer to Adam's side. Place the right hand to the medial side of the arm, gripping the distal of the biceps branchii. Further stabilize by putting his left hand on the proximal forearm, against the extensor carpi ulnaris and extensor digiti minimi.

"Like this, I am more securely anchored, see? And when I lift my left leg, the leg I can comfortably place my weight on, that is when I will rely on you for balance."

Adam nods, having set aside his pouting long enough to observe Victor's changes. "…may I…?" He questions in a quiet rumble, as he places his free hand over Victor's on his forearm.

It is a minor change, yes, but it brings a utilitarian arrangement to something uncomfortably similar to how a man might escort his lady companion.

Victor does not say this. He simply sighs and relents with a disapproving, "I suppose."

This small gesture of compromise brings a smile back to Adam's lips. Victor looks away.

"Now, to practice. You must keep my pace."

"I know," Adam murmurs, and, to his credit, he seems perfectly comfortable maintaining a slower gait, as Victor sets them across the meadow they have found on the other side of the forest.

He supposes it would make sense. Adam was previously companion to an old blind codger. And Adam is not the impatient one of the two.

Victor, however, is very tired of being out in the middle of nowhere, entirely at the whim of Mother Nature and her hateful elements.

Without the trees as a buffer, the winter gales are merciless. Their position does allow Victor to use Adam as a shield, but that just means the person who insists on their constant contact is growing colder to the touch with every strike of the wind.

It is a miserable march across the plain. Or would this be farmland come spring? It matters little, except that farmland necessitates a farmer, who would keep his lodging within a certain distance of his plot. It is slim, but the possibility remains, and Victor clings to the hope they will come upon some lodging, holding to it tightly with what little sanity he has left.

It is still two terrible hours of trudging ever forward before there is any change of note.

Adam is the one to announce it, his height allowing his gaze to travel further. It is one simple word, but hearing it here and now, Victor could cry from relief.

"Road."

And soon Victor can see for himself that his creation is correct.

Ever so slightly higher than the surrounding plains, there is a stretch of ground just wide enough to accommodate a wagon, and proof that one has been through recently, evident by the wheel tracks cut through the snow.

Finally.

Oh, and best of all, they can turn their backs to the damned wind for the remainder of their march.

It may still be more than a day of walking before they arrive at Vaduz, but being on the road eases some of Victor's worst concerns. They are no longer lost in the wilderness. Other people have made their way using this very road, maybe as recently as today.

Finally, it feels as though they're getting somewhere.

Of course, Victor is not one of God's favored, and should not have dared to trespass further by allowing hope to enter his forsaken heart.

He isn't sure what goes wrong, exactly, but his false foot catches on something obscured by the snow, which causes it to falter as he takes his next step. The false knee jerks out of place, putting the leg behind him, making any attempt at balance impossible.

Were it not for Adam, Victor would be face down in the snow.

It is not a graceful recovery—Victor squawking like a wounded duck as he tips forward, pulling Adam with him until the man remembers he has plenty of strength to right them both. Adam catches Victor around the waist and tries to get him standing, but the Godforsaken leg will not take his weight.

Victor lets out a furious scream. They are so close! So close, and he cannot even make it there under his own power?!

Adam suggests they stop and see to his brace, which is annoyingly practical of him.

Victor remains in a mood.

Their 'break' is made marginally more tolerable by Adam plying him with the last of the jerky, a favor Victor does not refuse.

He is nearly finished when Adam asks, "how did you lose it?" He's fiddling with the knee, trying to understand it and why it will no longer lock as intended.

Victor huffs. "I already told you."

"You were vague," Adam counters.

He sneers at his creation. "You wish to know the gorey details, then? Hmm?"

"I do not know how one loses a leg to fire," Adam corrects.

While there are certainly ways that fire could damage a single limb and render it unrecoverable, necessitating amputation, Victor does know by now that his creation is not as dim as he presents. No doubt his own experience with flame—at Victor's hand no less—has familiarized him with how indiscriminate the element can be.

So, the true meaning of his inquiry can be inferred to be; why only that leg?

Or perhaps Victor is giving him undue credit, because Victor is too tired and cold to argue the finer details.

"…I was leaving. I was leaving…when I heard your voice."

Adam looks up from his work.

Victor continues; "And I did not think, I just. Turned and ran back to the door. That is when the chemicals within the batteries reacted to the kerosene. The explosion threw me back with such force, it tore my leg apart."

Adam's scars wrinkle as the muscles below pull his brow together in confusion. "…why…"

"I have told you," Victor says, "it was madness. All of it. All of it, since the day you," he gestures to Adam, "were brought to life. Just one madness bleeding into the next."

"…what of it was so maddening?" The question is soft; Victor can hear no distrust in the tone, nor ridicule. If he were a fanciful man, he might even believe there was, instead, concern.

"…you will not understand."

The gentleness of Adam's expression falls and is replaced by a flat, stubborn glare, thank goodness. "Try, Victor," Adam orders.

"It is not to insult you," Victor says, and does truly mean it, "it is simply fact you haven't been alive long enough to—to commit yourself to one venture and one venture only. To strive for something no one believed could be done. It was my life. There was nothing but the work. Nothing. For twenty years, it was constant, and I was shunned and insulted and my theories were laughed at, called heretical—I could trust no one else. It had to be me.

"…then it worked. And I…I was not prepared. My only foundation crumbled beneath me, and there you were, a man in every way but mind. I thought something must have gone wrong. Why else would you be so infantile? I'd done something wrong, but so much went wrong, all at once, that I cannot say where I failed you."

"What went wrong?"

"…it is so complicated, Adam."

He is allowed a moment to believe the subject will be abandoned, but then Adam says, "…I have nothing else. No childhood. No history, no lineage. No one who has…lived like me. No one whhho, who was born like me." He leans forward toward Victor, causing Victor to realize just how little space there has been between them during this conversation. Now he barely a breath away, forcing Victor to lean back to regain a scant hand width—no, less!—of personal space. "I may not understand it today," Adam continues, his large, dark eyes shifting ever so slightly to look between Victor's, searching, "but I may understand in the future. I will never know it, if you refuse to tell me."

Victor looks away.

Swallows. Considers the request. Decides on the baseline of understanding he would need to have to grasp the science.

"…what did you learn from my notes?"

"That you built me fffrom many different men." And Adam sits back, praise the Lord.

"What of the energy transference?" Victor asks, relaxing somewhat.

"…that I did not find."

…well then, he has fallen below the baseline.

But he will still want his answers, no doubt! Victor can already guess at the shape of the ensuing argument. The very thought exhausts him.

"Of course not." Victor sighs and rubs his forehead with the back of his palm. "That is the phase where everything fell apart, and you have no concept of any of it."

"…learning I had nnnot forgotten a life, but was given one from the pieces of the dead was knowledge enough," Adam says, his voice dropping to that angry rumble that sets Victor's skin to prickle with fear. With anticipation. Victor makes a passing association to the sound of thunder, and then realizes what the scent clinging to his creation has been. The inhuman scent. The smell of lightning.

A son of Zeus indeed.

"You cannot know that pain," his demigod continues; "The…loathing I felt for my very self. To learn I am not a person. I am other, and I am wrong. I should not be. I cannot even escape myself. I am trapped in this body that knows not how to die!" The anger breaks into despair.

Victor looks away.

"…why did you want this?" Adam asks. "Why would anyone want this?"

And that is a very good question. Were it only he had a rational answer.

"…I wanted to conquer death."

His eyes return to Adam to find him staring in horror and fury both. "But…you did not consider what the man you gave life to would feel—"

"No, I did not." That should be obvious by now.

"…why so many?" When Victor does not answer, Adam takes his arm and tugs ever so slightly, just enough to force his creator to meet his eyes again. "Victor; why build me? Why not try and—and bring back someone newly dead, someone whole? Why not try and return to them their life?"

Victor starts to laugh. He must sound mad, as though the last of his sanity has gone, for Adam releases him and sits back, eyes wide and worried. Victor regains his composure over the next minute, and then states plainly, "…because that would be too easy."

"…what?"

Victor straightens, taking on the confident air he brought to his tribunal, what feels like a lifetime ago. He is sure he does not manage more than a pale imitation, but it is not for his audience, it is for his own amusement. He deserves no confidence, nor pride in his work. To affect it now, it can only be in jest.

"My expertise is as a surgeon. Think a moment of all that you are, all the pieces that form you," and he raises his hand to drag it slowly through the air, indicating Adam's head, trunk and down to his legs folded beneath him, "and believe me when I tell you no other man could interlock those many disparate parts and ensure their function, as I have. It was an art that I created, that I mastered. And if you were to be my one chance to make life from death, I would make you perfect."

Adam's expression has flattened to contempt.

"…well?" Victor's creation, his demon, his half-god asks; "Did you?"

Victor snorts and looks away. "Obviously not."

"…you said. Last night you said—"

"And I meant it," Victor snaps. "And it is a useless question, besides. There is no other you for me to judge you against. There is nothing either of us can do to change the past. There is only the now and what we make of the future—"

"Look." Adam's hand is suddenly there, against Victor's chest, his head turned to look back the way they came. "Victor, look."

Victor does. And not far down the road, approaching them at a humble but steady pace, is a horse drawn cart.

"…help me up," Victor says, patting at Adam's chest in kind. Taking that arm, Adam pulls them both upright and aids Victor in limping back to the side of the road, so he can begin waving and calling to the driver, pleading for aid.

Chapter Text

The driver calls to the horses as they pull on the reigns, drawing the two ragged looking animals to a stop before Victor and his creation. Then, pushing a fur lined hat up past her brow and pulling her scarf down from around her nose, the driver, revealing herself to be an old maid of considerable years, gives the both of them a hard look.

"Good God, boys," she says, voice rough in the way of a smoker and lisping around several missing front teeth, "what happened to you?"

"We've been—" Adam pulls them another step forward and Victor stumbles, causing him to swallow his answer until he's been righted again, "we're trying to get to Vaduz."

"Your friend alright?" asks the old woman, nose upturned in Adam's direction, the skin laxity around her eyes causing them to all but disappear as she squints at him. "Boy; you're turning blue."

"That's just his complexion," Victor answers quickly. After a glance his way, Adam nods.

"Mmm-hmm." Victor has known enough women on in their years to know what that noise means. She doesn't believe him. Still; she doesn't set the horses back to their work, which is a good sign. "Vaduz you said?"

"Yes, madam, and as you can see," Victor pats his right thigh to draw her attention to his bare prosthetic, its bottom half dragging behind him, "our journey will take us more than a day on foot. Would you do us a kindness and consider allowing us to ride on your cart?"

"We can pay," Adam says, unbidden.

"Yes," Victor says, strangling the urge to glare at him for speaking out of turn, and forcing a tight smile on instead, "we can."

He should not have stopped himself, for it only emboldens Adam to flash the metal filled pocket of his soldier's coat. Victor slaps at his hand and hisses a, "Stop." to him.

The old woman is sitting straighter and looking at them with a wary air when Victor returns his gaze to her. "…that a pocket full of silver?"

Victor sighs. "Yes. And a piece is yours, if you would let us ride."

The driver considers them for a long minute, looking more to Adam than Victor, which worries him. He would not call Adam's smile disarming. It's too eager—and he keeps turning it on the horses, as though he must win their trust as well.

"Please, madam," Victor beseeches, as sweetly as he can.

Again, she looks to Adam, who is finally seeming to grasp this is going badly for the both of them, and has let his smile fall, adopting instead the air of a puppy waiting to be kicked.

While Victor doubts this is a strategic decision, it thankfully works.

The old maid huffs out a sigh of her own, then holds her hand out, her gloves barely able to conceal the knots of osteoarthritis at every joint. As it is clear who softened her heart towards them, Victor nudges Adam, and murmurs, "Give the woman her payment."

Adam smiles so wide, Victor thinks he might be showing every tooth, right back to the molars. At least Victor ensured they were a good set. Still dragging Victor along beside him, Adam shuffles close enough to place a hunk of silver into the old woman's palm.

It is far too large—roughly the size of the distal phalanx of Adam's thumb—for a half-days trip into town, and the woman's surprise means she's aware of it, too.

"…well." The woman gives them one last lingering assessment before pocketing the silver and motioning to the cart behind her with a jerk of her acne scarred chin. "Go, make yourselves comfortable."

"Thhhank you, ma'am," Adam says, before helping Victor to the back of the cart.

Their newly acquired transport is only half-full, with an assortment of crates secured to its sides with ropes. From how they're all situated at the back, Victor wagers they have found the woman between deliveries. Of what, he cannot say, for the lot of them have been covered with tarps. Regardless, the space works well in their favor, especially Adam's, burdened as he is with those long limbs.

"There's a blanket back there," the driver calls to them as they settle. The cart has her up well above them to ensure she can see the road beyond her horses. From their vantage point, she's almost obscured by her cargo. "But y'may have to fight Ada for the privilege."

There's an agitated 'rwrrwohhh' from Adam's other side, which Victor takes to mean both the blanket and 'Ada' have been found.

"…Victor," Adam murmurs, staring down at something Victor currently cannot see.

"What?" he asks, reluctantly shifting to get a look past his creation. It's just an old, musty looking horse blanket, currently occupied by a bushy, black and brown feline. Victor looks to Adam, who is continuing to look at him. "Do you—" Adam immediately shakes his head. Victor stifles the urge to roll his eyes. "It's a cat."

"Cat," Adam echoes under his breath, delight breaking across his patchwork face as he offers the cat his finger and it immediately sits forward to give the digit an investigatory sniff.

"Yes—and beware their feet, they've—" God Almighty, he's already coaxing the thing into his lap. "Why do I bother?" Victor asks the overcast sky.

"Are you Ada?" Adam is saying, voice tipped higher, brighter, as he begins to pet the animal gently behind her ears. It seems even man-made men are compelled to baby-talk small animals. "Hello. You are very soft. My nnname is Adam. That is sort of like Ada. Wwwould you be my friend?"

The horses have started again. Victor settles back against a crate and closes his eyes, unsure if he will manage any rest on such a bumpy, creaking cart, but determined to try. Then Adam calls his name.

"What—did her claw get you?"

"No, she's." He outright tugs Victor's sleeve, refusing to relent until Victor opens his eyes and properly gives him his full attention. "Is thhis a good? Sound?"

It only takes a second to realize what his creature refers to. "It's purring," Victor says, already settling back to his previous position, "and yes. Cats will do that when they're happy."

"She behaving back there, boys?" calls the driver, yelling to be heard over the wheels and hooves and the creaking of wood.

"Yes, madam," Victor calls in reply, "she seems quite friendly."

The woman barks a laugh so sharp, Adam goes tense and still for a few breaths. "She's not!"

"Then my friend has charmed her with his…" How to put this…. "…gentle nature."

"Ah. Might remind her of my late husband. He was a tall one. Edith, by the by."

"Adam!" says Adam, practically brimming with excitement at the chance to introduce himself. Then he catches sight of Victor's frown and turns the enthusiasm down by several degrees. "That. Mmmy name is—is Adam."

Victor follows, giving only his first name, as well.

...what would be Adam's surname? It can't be 'Frankenstein'; no one would believe they're related. Then again, he and William--

"What had you two all the way out here?"

The question comes at the perfect time, as Victor was in dire need of a distraction. He decides to keep things simple; "Misfortune, madam. Misfortune."

"Ah. Pity. You weren't in that forest, were you?" Edith does not stop long enough to let them answer, "Some odd sightings, there. And wolves who don't fear men. Come out in the day and snatch up sheep. Even heard tell of a man attacked by them in his own home." Adam goes still, again, and this time he does not relax. "Of course, some people are saying it weren't wolves but something else. Don't believe those stories myself, of course—"

"It was the wolves," Adam states, voice steady and clear. He's glaring out the back of the cart, perhaps…reliving the discovery of the fate of his friend.

"You sound certain, lad."

Something about the woman's tone causes Adam to soften somewhat. "…it was mmmy friend who. Who was killed."

"Ah, lad. That I'm sorry to hear. Don't worry yourself none; he was a pious man, I've heard; I'm sure he's gone home to the Lord."

Adam does not reply. He returns his attention to Ada, who has begun walking in circles, there, in his lap, grinding her face into his chest with every rotation. The animal settles once Adam's hands are back in her abundant fur.

Victor takes note of how quickly this improves Adam's abruptly dour mood.

He was not allowed any pets when he was young, and saw no reason to obtain one when he had grown, but if one might keep Adam occupied and content—

What is he thinking, Adam will simply find a new colony of mice to befriend. Althought that would put him at odds with the alley cats. Victor finds he is curious which side of that conflict Adam would choose.

"Suppose you'll be wanting to turn that silver into something a little more manageable," Edith says, after a time.

"Yes, madam."

"Then your luck's turned around; we'll be passing the silver smith, on the way to my buyer."

Well, well. Maybe it has. "That is quite fortunate."

"These…seem heavy?" Adam says, turning to look to the driver. "Do—do you need help?"

Before Victor can admonish him, Edith laughs, and says, "Ah, you are a gentle one. No lad; they've men hired to unload this cart. I just do the driving."

"Also," Victor says in a hiss, only for his creation; "we have paid her."

Adam ignores him. "…dddo your—your horses? Have names?"

"Animal lover, 'ey lad?" For the first time, Edith turns to take a quick look at him, wrinkled cheeks crinkling further with her smile. "No, of course you are; you've won old Ada over so quick. The gray one is Pebble and the one with that big spot on her rump is Sunny."

"They are very hhhandsome horses, ma'am."

No, they aren't!

"Now that's just a straight lie," Edith replies, brightly, "These old girls are about ready to fall apart, same as me. But it was kind of you to bend the truth, lad."

Adam seems to consider his next question carefully. "…do…thhey like to be pet?"

Dear Lord. Is this going to be his reaction to every animal they stumble across? Is he really going to leave Victor to lean against some wall just to pet a pair of mangy, ancient horses? Who probably have fleas.

...now that he thinks about it, Adam should have acquired a small army of fleas himself, at this point. But if he had, they would have transferred to Victor by now. Is there something about his blood that deters them? Or perhaps kills them outright, before they can reproduce...

Another thing to remember once they're safely in his flat in Edinburgh.

"Pebble might let you," their driver is saying, "but don't bother with Sunny. She's a mean old spinster; likes to bite more than she likes most anything else."

"Please take the kind woman at her word," Victor begs.

"…I—I know I cannot befriend all animals, Victor."

"Goodness, that's news to me, considering how friendly you were with the mill mice and the—" no, he has to be careful, he doesn't want the woman knowing where they found the silver. "'Basement' mice."

"Mmm—mice enjoy being held and pet," Adam corrects, primly, despite outright having to start the first word over, it sticks so stubbornly in his throat.

"…I don't understand it," Victor says, slowly shaking his head, "you can speak clearly when angry, but not when you are calm?"

Adam shoots him a glare. "…I wish to be understood when angry."

"So that is when you put in the effort."

"Yes."

"If you always held yourself to that standard," Victor says, "you may improve, and be rid of this stammer for good."

Adam doesn't reply right away, instead spends a half a minute soothing himself by stroking through Ada's fur. "…knew you judged me," he says, finally.

"Oh, don't sulk," Victor tuts.

Adam's eyes flash to him for a moment, immediately taking his words as a challenge. Victor's creation leans forward to whisper conspiratorially to Ada as he scratches gently under her chin. "You do not care hhhow I sound, do you, Miss Ada?"

Of course not. She's a cat. She doesn't know what words are, never mind that they can be spoken wrong.

Chapter Text

They arrive at Vaduz just past noon.

The ride there had been blessedly uneventful, if one ignores the conversation happening between passenger and driver, as Victor had for the last half of their journey. He had been monitoring Adam, concerned he might divulge some piece of information that would bring scrutiny upon them—more than they were already due, considering their extremely odd circumstances and even odder presentation—but Adam seemed far more interested in learning about Edith, and would politely decline any personal questions she returned, save for his opinions on certain fauna and how badly he wished to meet them. (If they weren't a large predator, he wanted to meet them quite badly.)

Edith was the daughter of a farm hand and a laundry maid. She had many siblings, who went on to have many children, while her and her late husband's union never produced them an heir. While this would have been quite distressing for almost any family, Edith assured her passengers it was for the best. It afforded her and husband the freedom to travel, and later act as safe haven as her nieces and nephews exited adolescence and began to yearn for something beyond their own parent's purview.

Once all the extended family matured beyond their need for supervision, Edith and husband returned to their travels, entered the roving mercantile trade, and found it was a business that suited them and their more adventurous dispositions well.

Here, Edith broke from a wandering but mostly cohesive narrative to giving scattered anecdotes about the surrounding area. And here was where Victor decided his vigil could be abandoned, so he curled his good leg up, crossed his arms over his knee and attempted some rest.

It was not unlike his other bouts of just…going away. He's becoming distressingly good at that, actually.

But he was easily roused once Adam caught sight of the town and decided Victor had to be awake and present for their arrival.

"You two stay the night," Edith says, as the ground begins to level to tightly packed earth, "it's market day come tomorrow. Plenty of shops open today, mind, but there'll be a wider selection, then."

"Books?" Adam asks, clearly hopeful.

"I think so. Their booths would be a street over," Edith motions to her left, "by the hotel."

"Hotel-Gasthof Löwen?" Victor asks. It's where he, William and Harlander had stayed when first touring the Tower, and then after, as need called for it, as William oversaw its reconstruction.

It's a modest hotel for the area, especially a still growing market town. Well constructed. Solid. He'll never enjoy sleeping above a tavern, and will not be able to afford the room he had stayed in previously, furthest from the noise of drunkards and their nightly entertainment, but he knows the establishment, the competency of their staff, and will be able to send what letters he needs through their front desk, saving them yet more time wandering the mostly unfamiliar village to find their post master.

"That's it. Not far from the blacksmith—"

"You mentioned a silversmith before," Victor cuts in.

"Did I? Sorry, lad, they only have a blacksmith, here, but he'll take your silver, not to worry."

Wonderful.

Not far ahead, a bell begins to toll. The sound startles Adam so badly, Ada vacates his lap and, Victor assumes, returns to her musky horse blanket.

"It's a bell," Victor tells him. "A chapel bell; it's either relaying the hour, or calling the parishioners to prayer, or releasing them thereafter."

"Chapel's letting out," Edith confirms; just giving context, as he doubts she's overheard his hushed explanation, or seen Adam's reaction, as her eyes should be on the road, now that they're within the town limits.

"W-where?" Adam asks.

"Up to the right, we'll be passing it soon."

Oh, good. Adam isn't on that side, but Victor is, which means Adam is coming right over to join him. Rather than risk moving closer to the end of the cart, Victor scoots to more or less reclaim Adam's previous seat, there, beside Ada and Ada's blanket. The trade isn't as awkward as he'd been braced for; in fact Adam assists by moving the dead weight of his prosthesis out of his way before settling.

The ease of it is…strange. Even the moment where they're practically on top of one another doesn't feel the way Victor expects it to. He's always hated people being too close, or worse, touching him without invitation—and the initial realization had sent a panic through him he's always gotten, when the ability to keep his distance was taken from him.

But it…there is usually something after the panic. A wave of revulsion, a prickling of the skin, and a spike of anger he has to contend with for the remainder of the interaction.

That…doesn't happen.

And for a moment, Victor just stares at Adam in muted confusion.

Adam doesn't notice; he's craning his head past the edge of the cart, eagerly looking for the chapel and its worshipers.

Which is for the best. If he asked Victor to explain his own reaction, he wouldn't know what to say—he wouldn't even be sure what reaction he's given, which is a much more frightening thought, as it means he's completely dropped the self-awareness required to—to—

Well. Stay in control of a situation.

He cannot linger on this—they're ten, maybe fifteen minutes from leaving the safety of this cart and then they'll be in public and Adam won't know how to handle himself, which means Victor has to handle the both of them. This is not the time to be distracted.

While Victor cannot see the congregation from his new position, he can hear them just fine. It seems rather late for Mass to be let out, but it is possible there's some other function that's just ended, though he would need to be much better acquainted with the functions of small village churches to guess at what. That level of noise—especially when this has otherwise been a very quiet, relaxed journey—implies that half, maybe more, of Vaduz had been in attendance.

Just their luck. If they had been even an hour earlier, they may have done their business and retired to the hotel without any social obligation. Free to take their time, without worry of Adam's unusual height and unique face drawing undue attention. But then, the blacksmith may be part of the worshipers number, which would have forced them to wait until he returned to his shop, setting them on the current schedule, regardless.

They may still have to wait. It doesn't sound as if the crowd is dispersing with any haste.

Then, for no reason Victor can intuit, Adam spins around and slides himself down to hide below the edge of the cart. The action puts his long legs all over Victor's, which he does mind, necessitating Victor to shove them off again.

"What?" Victor asks.

Adam doesn't say, eyes avoiding his creator's, mouth pressed tightly—is the man nervous? No, that might be genuine fear.

"Adam." Victor says, more firmly, which does draw his creation's eyes back to him, sharp and challenging.

"Don't," Adam snaps.

"Are you hiding right now?" Victor presses.

"I said, don't."

"You can't act like this and expect me not to question—"

As Victor replies, Adam inches back up past the cart side, glancing in the direction of whatever has caused him such distress. His attention lingers, and, as they pass a building that must shield the chapel from his line of sight, Adam visibly relaxes, slides down again, squeezes his eyes shut and lets out a long, shaking breath.

"What. Happened. Adam." This time, Victor is pulling at his sleeve.

"I do not want to talk about it," Adam says, jerking his arm away.

"You are telling me later," Victor hisses.

"Enough, Victor."

"For now," he replies. It earns him a glare, which is fine. Preferable to the fear Adam seemed lost in not a minute before.

What on God's earth could frighten a man that cannot die?

…Victor himself doesn't count. At the time neither of them knew his creation could survive and revive from anything, and he had the man in chains, besides.

And Adam clearly does not fear him any longer.

So what in the world did he see?

The mystery consumes Victor for the remainder of their journey, his eyes locked to Adam, searching his countenance for any clue, large or small. Adam, in turn, pointedly ignores him. He does, at least, return to sitting upright and taking in the scenery, although Victor catches him glancing back the way of the chapel more than once, and Adam never reclaims the childlike awe he previously had, when surveying his new surroundings.

It is only a handful of minutes before Edith announces they have reached their destination. Adam gathers Victor to his side with the air of a man forced to do his daily chores, and seems all too happy to deposit him to lean at the side of the cart while he goes and makes nice with the horses.

"He's a special one," Edith says to Victor.

"Quite." Lady, you have no earthly idea.

"Guard him," she says, with such severity Victor is drawn to look at her and finds her staring into him with the look and authority of a matron. Instinctively, he straightens. "And heed his advice. Boys like him see the world with new eyes. See it true. Most wont understand, but he's your ward, so you best try."

"…madam," Victor says, giving her a slow, purposeful nod.

She releases him, turning back to regard Adam, and Victor finds he is drawn there as well. The fear has finally left the creature entirely, eyes bright and smile brighter as he strokes the nose of the gray mare and murmurs to her something or other—his name, perhaps. A request for them to be friends.

He is so simple and yet not. Seeing with new eyes—Edith had been correct in that.

…only they are not new, they are repurposed. Nor is his mind new, he simply has lost what life he once had, likely through some misstep of Victor's. Not enough energy correctly channeled at that crucial moment. A missing stitch somewhere, a blocked—

Oh, for God's sake, Adam's turned his sight to the horse that bites people!

Victor opens his mouth to deter him, but is diverted by a pull on the fur of his collar.

"Don't." Edith says in a stern whisper. "You'd've startled her and then she really would've bit." And the old woman holds him by the collar until she seems certain he's heard and understood. Which he has.

This is why Victor hates animals. Especially horses. They're so damned temperamental. And dangerous! They can kick a man's ribs apart! Or crush one under their weight! And take several fingers in one bite.

Yes, Adam's would regrow, but how in God's name were they to explain that to Edith.

Thankfully, Adam is only talking to the bitey horse, and it is a blessedly short one-sided conversation. Once he's stepped away, Edith calls Victor's creation back to her, and Adam heeds her with a smile.

"Ma'am," Adam greets, politely.

"You take care, dear," Edith says, reaching to pat at his cheek, which seems to please him near to tears. "You're a good boy," she tells him, sweetly. "Never forget that."

"Can I—" the words stick and Adam has to swallow and drop his eyes a moment to regain composure. "Cccan I, uhm. Can I consider you…my friend?"

Edith smiles so widely, her eyes once again disappear beneath the sea of wrinkled, pockmarked skin. "Of course, lad. Me, and the girls. Even Miss Sunny."

"I hope to see you again," Adam replies, having taken her hand to hold in both of his own.

"Well, if you're here in a weeks time, you might catch me on my next delivery."

Adam looks to Victor. Victor shakes his head.

"…I don't think I will. But I won't forget you." His creation pronounces the words carefully, with a serious air.

"Nor I you. Now," Edith sits back, and Adam releases her hand. "Look after your friend," she instructs. "He's lucky to have you."

Again, Adam looks to Victor. This time, Victor replies with a nod of assent—not because it is true, but because the old woman is watching and would lengthen this already prolonged interaction to reprimand him. Adam seems well aware Victor is not acting in earnest, narrowing his miss-matched eyes at his maker, but graciously decides to let Victor's deception slide, at least long enough to finish his goodbyes.

And then, they are once again alone, together.

Chapter Text

The moment Edith has pulled away, Adam lifts his dirty black hood over his head.

It is a good strategy, which means Adam is thinking of strategy, which means he is still concerned about the thing he saw but refuses to discuss.

Unfortunately for Adam, the blacksmith's shop is closed, which means Victor has time to bother him about his stupid secret keeping.

"I cannot help you if you refuse to tell me what is wrong," Victor says.

"I did not ask for help," Adam replies, just as tersely.

"I'd hoped being friendly with the horses would have improved this mood of yours," Victor continues, undeterred. "Perhaps I should be blunt; whatever can frighten you is a risk to me, and I deserve to know about it."

Adam turns his head enough to peek at Victor from behind his hood. He looks pensive, but also as if he's considering Victor's words.

Finally, he says; "Men with sunset hair, that crisscross."

…Mary, Mother of God, give him strength.

"Men with what?"

"Sunset hair. The—the color."

"…orange?" Victor hazards. "Or red?"

Adam just sort of shrugs at him.

"…do you know the name of any colors?"

"You demand I tell you things, and then you do this," Adam all but growls at him, that inhuman rumble beginning to peek through.

"Be calm—you cannot make sounds like that here."

Adam doesn't reply, just turns from him to hide behind his hood.

"…How does the hair compare to my gloves?" Victor asks. God, his poor gloves. Currently, they are in terrible condition, will need to be washed carefully, perhaps even require new stitching, as he hasn't had the luxury to remove them for more than a few minutes, as doing so would hasten the frostbite already attempting to steal his digits from him. Their wear has rendered them a quite dull red, bordering on brown, but a red nonetheless.

Adam doesn't answer, just stares back toward the chapel, a gaze which Victor follows and—Oh, good, a small wave of people are coming toward them now. All the shop keeps returning to work, and their customers trailing behind. Victor squints, trying to pick any men of the Irish or Scottish persuasion from the crowd, but near everyone has a head covering and high collars to combat the current chill.

"…why can we not go inside?" Adam asks, still focused on the crowd.

"Because the door is locked, Adam," Victor replies, unable to keep his exasperation from coloring his tone.

"Meaning?"

"…that someone locked it." No, he does hear himself, he does realize that isn't a good answer. He just—he hates this! He hates this! This is why he refused to teach, and only covered for a colleague that once, and loathed every minute of it and swore to himself never again! "There—it's a—Someone does not want us inside. Were there no locks on that farmhouse? With the mill?"

"The mill had a bar of wood to stop the doors, and the sheep pen had a gate. Neither looked like this," Adam motions to the blacksmith's front door, sturdy and set in a proper door frame. "The pen was to lock sheep inside," he adds, like that at all matters in this discussion.

"Well, shops use locks, too, and it is to keep people out when the owner wishes they stay out."

"…when will he be back?"

"I don't know, Adam." Victor attempts to rub his nose in irritation, but quickly abandons the motion, as the bridge of it is still quite tender. At least there's no longer a garish bruise, there. So much that he can see, anyway. "Will you answer my question? Was the hair like my gloves or brighter?"

"…brighter," Adam replies after a glance his way.

"Good." That at least rules out one kind of redhead. Now, what would Adam be familiar with that is orange? Oh. Oh, of course. "Similar to a leaf? The ones that you found, in the tower?"

This time Adam just nods, but only after giving Victor a lingering, distrusting look. How had he earned that? He isn't trying to trick him, Victor is trying to figure out what in the world 'sunset hair' is!

"So; orange," he concludes. "Now, what is this about 'crisscross'?"

Adam threads his index and middle fingers together and presents them to Victor. He must admit, it is a very good, very simple way to evoke a 'braid.'

"Plaited," Victor says. "Or braided. Men with orange hair and braids."

"Yes," Adam replies, quietly. People have begun to pass them, now, and Adam turns to face the shop and hide his hands, tucking them inside his coat. "…mmmy friend's sons."

"…but they are not your friends," Victor hazards.

Adam shakes his head.

Before he can elaborate, or rather before Victor can demand elaboration from him, the damned door finally opens for them. Behind it is a young man, likely the blacksmith's apprentice, the soot on his face unable to distract from his clearly chronic case of cystic acne. And who immediately freezes in place once he sees Adam. Adam watches him curiously in turn.

"It is rude to stare," Victor says. The boy's eyes jerk to him as color rises to his cheeks. Good. He is being quite embarrassing, and should have to suffer feeling so. Victor makes a shooing motion at him. "Now if you please, we have business we wish to discuss with your employer."

The boy stammers an apology and quickly darts to the side to allow Victor and his creation through the doorway. The shop beyond is much to be expected—most notably the forge in the back keeping the whole room much warmer than the outside. If Victor wasn't certain of his coat blocking the majority of his terrible stench, he would have shed his immediately. Alas, he is doomed to sweat yet more on the once white waistcoat and dress shirt he's been stuck in for nearly a month, now.

But thank God, hallowed be Thy name, because there is a chair, in the area meant for customers no less, and the boy is already bringing it over for Victor. He is given a nod in thanks.

It's been a month since he's sat in a damn chair, too! Oh, what luxury!

"I-is, uh—is it—is it your leg, sir?" the boy asks, motioning at the prosthetic Victor has to manually adjust so it will not stick out in front of him and become a tripping hazard.

"In part. We are also here to sell silver."

"…I—I-I'm not allowed to do, uh, trade, but I can begin on your leg, sir. It's the part at the knee? Sir?"

"Yes," Victor says.

"…mmmay I watch?" Adam asks the boy, who startles, even though he'd spoken softly.

"Uh—"

"Show him," Victor orders. "We have travel left to do, and would benefit from knowing how to fix such issues ourselves. I will pay for your time."

"…o-okay, er, I mean y-yes, sir."

"And where is the blacksmith?" Victor asks. The boy looks back toward a door in the far wall of the shop, opposite their forge. Victor doesn't give him time to stutter out another meek little answer, and says instead, "go tell him I've silver to trade, and then see to this." As he had been speaking, Victor's worked apart the knot and slipped off his prosthesis, handing it, then, to Adam.

The boy nods, sort of bows, but not really, and then scurries off to inform his senior.

Adam looks to Victor with that same distrust he'd gotten over the mention of leaves.

"What?"

"…why are you being nice?" Adam whispers.

"Because I am nice?" Victor replies.

"You are not," Adam protests, bullishly.

"Did you want to see the boy's methods or not?"

Adam turns from him and pouts.

The two sit in silence for the remainder of their wait, and then part; Adam following the apprentice to a work bench nearby, and Victor remaining in his seat as he negotiates the trading of silver.

Adam has, most certainly, the better deal of the two.

The blacksmith is a damned highwayman and tries to pay quarter price for the five and a half pounds of silver Victor empties from his pockets. Victor asks the bastard if he takes him for a fool before stressing that he knows very well the going price for this metal, and if the man cannot afford to buy it off him, they will take their business elsewhere.

In the end, the blacksmith can only pay for three and a quarter pounds of silver today. He expects business tomorrow—market day and all that—and advises Victor to come the day after, when he can purchase the rest.

Victor declines, for this is more than enough to buy a room, new clothes and transportation north with a merchant likely to quit town early the day after the market.

The sooner they get to Friedrichshafen and onto a train, the better.

The blacksmith attempts to leave him, then, but Victor asks him for several sheets of paper and a pencil. He is even generous enough to trade back one of his newly acquired franc to purchase the parchment outright.

While waiting for the man to return with the requested items, Victor looks for Adam, and finds his creation speaking softly with the apprentice as the young man works. He's lowered his hood and sat himself on the floor before the work table, his considerable height allowing him to see over it and watch the boy practice his craft. The boy says something and Adam smiles. The boy smiles back.

Good.

The more people Adam can convince he's just an odd looking man with an unusual stature, the easier their lives will be. Primarily Victor's, for if they are ever separated, he is almost certain those responsible will not be long for this world.

Like—

God. Like William.

Oh, William. Forgive him. God, what has he done?

Why had he forgotten William? Forsaken him and his memory?

How could he be cordial with the monster that shoved his brother hard enough to break open his skull?

What was he doing, making nice with the devil he'd brought into this world and unleashed upon the only people he can say he truly loved?

Because he cannot get away? Is that really his excuse? Because it was also his fault? True, but he had never wished death on either William or Elizabeth, and his complicity does not require him to endear himself to the thing that took them both away.

Took William away. Victor—Elizabeth was Victor's mistake, but not William.

Why then?

Because…it showed him kindness?

Is that really all he needs to toss William's memory to the wind? To spit on his grave?

The blacksmith passes him parchment and pencil, and Victor mutters his thanks and motions the man to leave him.

He's already been buried. They both have, by now. Or entombed, beside his mother. Their mother. And father.

Victor is sick with himself. There is no forgiving what he's done, and he's only lived to make it worse. It is blasphemy of the highest order, how he's conducted himself. Returned its kindness, given it a name, looked after it and answered its every question.

Promised—

But he hadn't meant it like that. He couldn't have meant it like that.

It was a moment of madness—that is all this hellspawn ever brings out of him; madness! And in turn, it weaponized his own father against him. His own memories—

No, that's—it couldn't have known that. But it was seeing himself in the creature that caused him to do what he'd done. But he is not that thing's father. Just because it lives and breathes, it does not change what it is; a project. An experiment. And something that should not be.

Old Edith had been wrong. Adam is not like the simple boys who lack in social niceties and carry the heart and mind of a child with them into adulthood. Adam was never a child. Adam was made, and Victor is to blame, and he cannot escape, because the monster cannot die, it will hunt for him and kill any who stand in its way, for it doesn't matter how kindly and simply it conducts itself, it still has that horrible strength, strength no human man could hope to contend with. It could kill them all, entirely by accid—

By—

By accident.

…it hadn't been an accident, had it? Victor does not know. He doesn't even know if Adam remembers what his brother looked like. If he remembers them meeting at all, in the Tower.

It's unlikely, for as Victor remembers it, his creation wanted to sit and hide its face—his face, from all but Elizabeth.

And had he not recoiled, when Victor told him off his loss? He'd asked if it was the loss of a friend, and Victor corrected him, and he'd retreated immediately, as if shocked. Unknowing and distressed by the answer.

God, he doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know what William would want him to do. Die, probably. Die and be thrown into hell, to burn for all eternity, as he deserves.

You are the monster, he'd said.

But another memory comes on the heels of his brother's final words. A stumbling petition, recited to him with such naked, earnest hope, he could not bring himself to look at creature making the request.

Another monster, Victor had said.

Yes. No hesitation, no anger in his voice, just immediate acceptance. Then; we can be monsters together.

We can be monsters together.

You are my companion, and I am yours.

"…Victor."

Victor jerks upright, and in that moment realizes he'd been doubled over his lap, hands locked around his dirty hair. How long had he been like that? God, no, he's been crying again, damn it all.

Adam—his creation, his monster, he captor and warden, his half-god, and dangerously, damningly close to becoming his friend—kneels before him.

"What," Victor asks, furiously wiping the evidence of his grief from his face. Perhaps leaving streaks of dirt behind. He needs out of these damned clothes!

"Humfrid has finished fixing your leg," Adam says—and there it is, its metal brace even newly polished, propped up in his creature's hands.

"Good," Victor says, motioning for the thing—

—heart of a man and the strength of a god—

—for Adam to put the damn thing on him again. "We can finally move on."

As Adam carefully tightens the laces, Victor looks past him and is relieved to find the young man—Humfrid, he supposes—nowhere in sight. At least this way he can pretend the boy didn't see him going to pieces, here, in the corner.

"Did the trade go well?" Adam asks, oddly careful with his diction.

"We've enough for now," Victor says, clinging to the distraction. "Enough to leave the day after tomorrow."

"We're to go to the hotel, now?"

"Yes—ack," Victor realizes he hasn't written anything down—but then again, he isn't even sure the errand boy employed by the hotel is literate. Well, he needs the paper for the letters he intends to send, so folds them into halves and then quarters to fit them in his pocket.

"What is the paper for?" Adam asks.

"Not now," Victor snaps. And then, despite his cruel tone, Adam helps him stand, and Victor—he doesn't know. He doesn't know! "It—I. I'd prefer we go, and discuss it later."

Adam does not argue, merely offers his arm to Victor, as he'd been taught to. So Victor could walk more securely and safely.

No, he is not thinking about this right now.

They have to go!

And so they do, Victor hobbling beside his giant, his focus fixed ahead, eyes searching for the street they must turn on, something that they cannot happen upon soon enough. Each time his mind begins to stray toward the questions he cannot answer, he focuses on the ache in his stump, the uncomfortable digging of the knot of his tied off pant leg, caught between the leather of the harness and Victor's skin.

It is not enough, so he chews the inside of his own cheek as well.

After what feels like an eternity, they finally reach Herrengasse, and beyond it, Hotel-Gasthof Löwen.

If only they could retire immediately to their room. But, no, they must purchase it first. And the tavern is already loud and crowded—likely a continuation of whatever had them staying past noon at the chapel—

Is it Easter? No, it can't be, that's in April.

It can't be April.

Victor must focus, must purchase their room and remember his requests and ensure they are met. It happens, but he barely feels he is there for it. He sees himself going methodically through his list of needs with the woman, there, behind the desk, but he is only a puppet. He is reciting a script.

He is promised a basin of clean water and soap and washrags. He is promised dinner at the requested time. He is assured they will take his postage, when he's finished with his letters.

He is given a key and is guided up the stairs to reach the room it belongs to. He thanks the hostess. She promises the water will be up soon. She leaves.

Adam reaches past Victor to push the door shut, and then continues forward, until he is pinning Victor there, chest to the door, Adam at his back and Adam's arms on either side to lock him in, and Victor is suddenly there, again, in his own body, sweltering and confused and struggling to breathe.

It isn't because of the pressure at his back—no, it is, it very much is, but not because his ribs are being compressed and his lungs haven't the room to expand. Victor is rendered breathless from the abrupt shift in his perspective, from feeling nothing to feeling everything, and Adam is pressing his face into Victor's hair, and has dropped one arm down to fit around his waist—

—and it should repulse him. It should. It had, every other time he was certain his creation was going to stake its claim and use Victor's body to its own ends. He remembers the revulsion, the panic, and it—it is simply not there.

Instead there is only the heat, and the racing of his own heart, and an awful, traitorous part of him wishing for the thing—the man—the thing to move its face lower and press cold lips to fevered skin.

No. No, no, no, he cannot think this, he cannot be this. Hadn't Victor carved this sin out of himself years ago? Hadn't he—why is he—

Victor shudders, and puts his hands before him, bracing against the door so he does not press himself tighter to it, does not enable his own entrapment, encourage his captor to pin him entirely, to abuse their difference in height and weight and render him helpless—

Victor is shaking from the effort it is taking to remain still. There is an ugly, animalistic need in him that this has reawakened, and he will not submit to it, he refuses. But this has to end. He has to—he has to get away—

"Please," Adam gasps into his hair, his hold around Victor's waist tightening ever so slightly when Victor attempts to escape. Victor grits his teeth as the single word, the simplest of actions to keep him in the embrace fans the flames inside him and threatens his will.

But then Adam's breath hitches and Victor can feel something wet on his scalp.

It—that night in the cave—

Is Adam crying?

"Adam," he says, hears himself say, all of his focus is still on his own body and while the desire has waned considerably at the possibility the man behind him is in distress, it has not completely gone away.

"Please, Victor," is the reply.

"Adam—"

"Please. I do not. Ask much." Words gasped and bitten off before they can become sobs.

…it is true. Adam asks very little of him. And how many times, now, has he held Victor while Victor was lost in the throws of grief and madness? Allowed him those pathetic moments and leveled on him no judgment after?

God, he hadn't been paying attention. What did Adam see? What has set him into a crying fit? Victor doesn't know. He was just so desperate to be anywhere else, he wasn't paying attention.

He can feel, now, how Adam trembles against him, the single arm around Victor fisted in the yellowing material of his waistcoat. Adam's tears drip one after the next into Victor's hair, collect on his scalp and run down the back of his neck.

Victor closes his hand around Adam's, just as he had—was that last night? Had he only made that promise last night? And already he's considered taking it back. God help him.

He doesn't want to.

He really doesn't want to take it back.

Victor is selfish and sinful and wants…whatever the hell this is.

…and he's told himself it is because he has nothing else, but that was a lie.

Must he always, always lie?

Because he is afraid. Of what he wants, and what he deserves. Of pain and rejection and doing everything wrong. Of the truth, that he is not a person, and never was.

If he is not a person, what does that make his creation? His Adam, here, now, clutching him close and silently weeping.

Victor does not know.

But he stays. At the very, very least, right now, he stays.

Chapter Text

Adam could not have guessed he'd be comparing his creator to wolves, this day.

Not their otherness, but their posturing.

The moment the door is opened for them, Victor is all sneering teeth and implicit threat. Adam has seen this before, though he had not recognized it for what it was at the time. It had been pointed at Adam, then, the night he came to Victor to make his request.

Now, Victor is posturing…for Adam?

Ordering the young man not to stare. To allow Adam to watch his work. To go and fetch his employer.

"…why are you being nice?" he asks in a whisper. 'Nice' isn't the right word, but he—he doesn't know another word for—and he assumes that is why Victor is acting this way, he is trying to be nice. This is Victor's twisted version of 'nice'.

"Because I am nice?" Victor replies.

No, he is not. Even his attempt to do Adam a kindness involves him inciting fear in others.

Adam says that, that no, he is not nice, though that should be obvious, and Victor deflects, asking, "Did you want to see the boy's methods or not?"

Yes, he had, but—

What is this? He hadn't acted this way with Miss Edith, why is he like this now?

This poor boy—he's having a harder time speaking to Victor than Adam.

"Do not fear him," Adam says, once he has followed the young man to a table with tools, where he sits opposite the boy, kneeling on the floor. He lowers his hood for good measure, making himself just that little bit smaller. "He's all teeth and no bite."

The young man gives a nervous laugh and seems he would rather focus on his work, although he glances to Adam now and again, eyes traveling around his face, no doubt taking in the scars.

"What?" Adam asks, softly, really just hoping to get it out of the way. The boy seems kind—he'd like to know him some before they have to leave.

"Your, uh. Well, I—I-I don't want to—to be rude, but—"

"My face?"

The boy nods.

"War," Adam says simply, then asks, "what's on your face?"

The young man stares at him, openly surprised. Should he be? He has scabs, there, and little things embedded in his skin, like wet and folded flower petals. They look painful, actually. Is it a sickness?

Then the young man looks back to his work and bites his lip; an attempt to hide a smile. "I guess that was pretty rude of me," he says.

Adam feels his own lips beginning to curl upward, and that warmth that comes over him, when he becomes certain the other does not fear him. He cherishes it, every time.

"Mmmy—my name is Adam," he says.

"Humfrid," says the young man. He works one of his tools into a round metal piece of the prosthetic and twists, which twists the metal, slowly working it free.

"It's nice to—to meet you, Humfrid."

"Yeah—you too."

Victor's laugh, cruel and humorless, cuts through the air, and both he and Humfrid go still and quiet.

"You think me a fool, is that it?" Victor is saying. He is tipped forward in his chair, eyes wide, and teeth bared. "Offering not even half the going price—a quarter. If you cannot afford to buy it off me, just say so, and I will take my business elsewhere!"

"…is he a…a noble or…?" Humfrid asks.

"Baron," Adam replies, quietly.

Humfrid does not say the word 'what' aloud, just mouths it as he keeps his eyes trained on the metal he is working apart piece by piece.

"They—they said a Baron was, y'know, was turning the old water tower into something. Is that…?"

"…Yes. But there was a fire."

"Everyone heard it. On the other side of the mountain, we heard when it blew."

Then;

"Is that how he lost the leg?"

Adam glances back to Victor, finding him still engrossed in his negotiations, likely 'winning', as the blacksmith has shrunken somewhat, head lowered, nodding to all that Victor says.

"…yes," Adam replies, softly.

"…so, you work? For him?"

"…it is hard to explain."

"Right. Of course. I—heh, IIiiieee should not be asking these questionssss."

"It is alright," Adam says, smiling. "I shhhould not be—be answering. Our secret."

Humfrid glances up at him, and smiles too.

"Can you…tell me w-what it is yyyou are—?"

"Oh, right, yeah, he's sort of, uh, paying me to—to teach you, huh?"

Humfrid explains, then, the name of his tools and the names of the pieces of metal and the name for what is wrong with the mechanism meant to lock the knee in place, so the false leg can take Victor's weight.

Adam listens greedily, repeating each back so he is certain he's learned it true, but not long after Humfrid's explained the difference between a screw and a bolt, Adam's attention is drawn back to Victor.

He's crying and muttering again. Oh, no.

"…whh—what, uh. Language? Is that?" Humfrid asks, voice dropped to a whisper.

"I…I-I dunno," Adam admits. "I—I thought I just…did not know the words."

"That is not Deutsch," Humfrid says with certainty.

Adam thinks he may be right. At least if he is assuming correctly the language they speak now, the language his friend taught him, is Deutsch. He watches as the blacksmith returns and Victor waves him away, spitting his unfamiliar words with a lilt he only seems to have when in one of his fits.

"…he does this, whh-when he's upset," Adam admits, quietly.

"What about?"

…he should not say. But…it has been so nice discussing the oddities of his creator with someone else. When will he have another chance? And when will they see Humfrid again? What could Humfrid, small and nervous and kind, do to bring he and Victor harm?

"…death," Adam decides to say. "There…th-there has been much death."

"…oh. I'm, uh. I'm sorry."

"His brother, and…a-a woman. We both cared for."

"I'm sorry, Adam."

"They've gone home to be with the Lord," Adam says, very much liking that sentiment. Very grateful he'd learned it from Miss Edith.

…in fact, that means Elizabeth can meet his friend. He likes the thought of that. If he cannot join them, at least they can be together.

"…if, uh. And you don't have to tell me, it's just. It's weird how dirty you both are? Him being a Baron and. This, here?" Humfrid pats the leg he's almost finished putting back together, "this is not cheap. And you've a bunch of silver…"

"…we have been traveling," Adam says. "Walking, from…from a place called Geneva."

Oh, he. Perhaps should have kept that bit to himself. Humfrid seems surprised, but the scared sort of surprised. Shocked? Like what Adam has said is too strange to be believed.

"…you. You walked here—all on foot?"

"No," Adam says. "Wwwe, we paid Miss Edith to—to ride on her cart."

"Edith?"

"Yes, she—she has two horses and a cat."

Humfrid swallows a laugh. "That. Doesn't tell me who she is, but okay."

"She does de—deliveries," Adam adds. "Big boxes under cloth."

"Oh…Oh. I know who you mean, now. I actually—I used to work i-in the, uh, in the stables? I looked after her horses a few times. The spotted one almost bit my hand off."

"Miss Sunny just doesn't like strangers, I think."

She's a lot like Victor, in that way.

…he's still muttering, but now he's pulling at his hair, too, which isn't good. He does have quite a lot of it, but one day Adam fears he'll pull a full fist of it out. Would the skin come with it? Would there be blood?

"Hey, uh. I'm done."

Adam smiles for his new friend as he gathers the false leg from his work table. "Thank you, Humfrid. Fffor this and. Talking to me."

"Yeah. It, uh. My pleasure, Adam, sir."

"Just Adam," he corrects, gently, his smile becoming true.

…now all that's left is to collect his maker.

"…would you do me one more kindness?" Adam asks. Humfrid agrees, readily, so Adam elaborates; "is there somewhere you could be where—where he won't see you?"

"Uh, yeah, yes, I've—there is always something I need to be doing, so…uh. Can I ask? Why?"

Goodness. How should he put this?

"He…is embarrassed when people see he has emotions."

"…ohhhh. That—yeah, my—my dad is like that, too…"

Technically so is Adam's.

…yet when he looks to Victor, he…is unsure if that is the word to use.

He needs to learn more of fathers, and families. If any of the conventional things people take for granted, their births from mothers, their siblings, their growth from children to adults, if he has any right to the words they use at all.

He doesn't even know if Victor sees him as a person yet. Adam could still just be an interesting experiment. A creature to study. And something to fear.

If he cannot extend the courtesy of personhood to his creation, Adam will not take him as family. He doesn't have to. They can remain companions.

…it will come to an end, one day, but today is not that day. Today, now, Victor is alive, and it is time for Adam to collect him.

He kneels before his creator and calls his name softly. He is careful with his words, saying them as Victor likes, because it is the only kindness he can give him here, now. He would wipe his tears away and hold him, but he is not allowed. There is only the words the way Victor likes, and the assistance with reattaching his leg, and being the one to take his weight, and it has to be enough.

…It seems it is, for Victor flashes his teeth when asked a question, but not a minute later he has softened and says they can discuss it at a later time.

It's these little moments where he tries that fills Adam with such…such hope.

That their companionship will not always be a burden upon them. That they will not always trade hateful words.

That Victor will never…try and kill him again.

…it is unfortunate, that Adam is thinking of death, as they finally reach the hotel. It is loud, inside. There is the smell of food, and the sound of music and raised voices. And people continue to pass them, and—

And a woman, there, in the throng, a thin cloth draped over her face.

Adam's hand shifts, trying to find Victor's heartbeat where it echoes against the skin of his wrist.

It is not the same as that night, Adam tells himself. No one will die. No one will shoot at them. He will not have to carry Victor through these people as they stare, and stare, and do nothing.

Victor is speaking, which means he is alive, but he also does not sound like himself. He sounds tired and clipped and he is not looking at Adam, and Adam…hadn't noticed how much Victor had started to look at him until he had stopped.

What does that mean?

He doesn't know, but. But it isn't helping.

Adam realizes he wants Victor to look at him and see he is not happy. To ask, even though Adam has refused him over and over, he wants Victor to ask if everything is alright. It is not—another woman passes, and her dress is the color of dark, wet grass, and Adam does not know why that hurts so much. Why that makes him think of Elizabeth. Makes him worry he will lose Victor soon, just as he lost her. Why it makes him so certain that soon he will be alone.

He wants Victor to look at him. He's right there, beside him, but Victor only looks ahead, and Adam already feels alone.

It isn't fair.

And perhaps it is cruel of him, to take what he needs without forewarning. Without asking for it. But Victor isn't looking at him, and that may mean he's mad at Adam, and maybe he would not have agreed.

So Adam is cruel, and is selfish, and when the woman who brought them to their room has gone, he folds himself against his creator and draws comfort from the heat of his skin and the sound of his breath.

Victor speaks, which means Victor is alive, and he even calls Adam by name, but the tears that had been building are coming down now and Adam cannot reply and cry at the same time. And he simply has to cry.

He begs Victor to understand. He reminds Victor that he asks little from him, from their arrangement.

Victor quiets and—and takes his hand and holds it so tightly. Like last night.

Something like a soap bubble pops in Adam's chest, and the tears change, from fear to relief.

Victor is here. Victor is alive. They are together.

They are together.

Adam is not alone.

Chapter Text

It takes some time for Adam to calm down, but when his grip loosens and the tears become less frequent, Victor, as gently as he can manage, points out that they have a bed they can use. And a small furnace to light, so their room will warm and they can shed all these dirty clothes.

Adam mumbles his agreement and after a few breaths, seems to find the strength to let Victor go.

This means Victor can finally look at the room they've been given. It is much as he expected, both from the price and the specifics he gave the hostess. The room is small; two windows with a well crafted wardrobe standing between, a desk set against the opposite wall with a pair of chairs, the furnace, a rug (with more than enough colors to help close that gap in Adam's education), and two single beds thankfully already pushed together. The small gap between the mattresses may prove to be an annoyance, but at least they won't have to risk damage to the floor to ensure the nightly routine is maintained.

Most importantly to him is that it is clean.

No water closet, but he suspects the chamber pot is waiting under the bed. It is less than ideal, but it's still an improvement over relieving himself in the freezing air in the middle of the woods.

As Victor fusses with the matches left beside the furnace, he glances back to Adam, who…has not moved beyond leaning himself against the opposite wall, beside the door.

"The bed is for us to use," he says, motioning to it for emphasis. Adam does look to him, at least, but the most he does is begin slowly wiping the tears from his face. No movement towards the perfectly good bed.

Fine. Maybe he understands he's still filthy and does not want to ruin the fresh linen. Victor returns to seeing the fire lit. This is not an arduous undertaking, but he lingers and removes his gloves to warm his hands over it a moment, before turning back to his…

Edith had called him Victor's 'ward' and that is…not remotely accurate, but is a decent enough lie for the rest of the world. Something to discuss once everything else has been seen to.

Lord, but he is tired.

Victor turns back to his creation, pulls out one of the chairs, and sits. Adam watches him dispassionately from where he's holding up the wall.

"What happened?" Victor asks.

Adam turns to look at but likely not through the windows, there, across from him.

"It had to be something," Victor continues, "it isn't like you to go to tears."

Adam does not reply.

Victor gives him a bit of time to come around to answering. When he does not, Victor sighs, and says, "if you will not tell me, I'll just have to guess."

The room is heating slowly, so he does not shed his coat as yet. He can, however, get the stupid leg untied. Here is another lengthy silence, a clear opportunity for Adam to simply answer the question. And of course, the man continues to stare into nothing.

"Did you see the sons, again?" Victor asks as he massages at his aching stump through the egregious tear Adam made in his pant leg. "Someone who resembled them?" No change in expression, no shift in posture, which means, "No, something else—was it..too many people?" Ah, a swallow. Could that mean, "Yes? Too many?"

"Cease," Adam orders. Victor complies, but only because he assumes the man has more to say. He has every intention of needling further should Adam continue to ignore him, and he assumes Adam is aware of this, the way he works a thumb, there, against his supraorbital margin and superior medial infraobital foramen, as if trying to relieve a headache.

Wonderful to know he garners that reaction from his own damn creation, as well as everyone else.

"I…will tell you," Adam finally says, "but…you must make me a promise first."

Another one?

…What, really, does he have left to lose?

"Acceptable terms, but I reserve the right to refuse."

Again, there is a long pause, in which time Victor works his cuff links free to set on the table beside his gloves, fishes his grandfather's pocket watch out from an inner pocket to rest beside them, and has begun to untie his absolutely ruined dress shoes. Shoe. Only one foot, after all. However could he forget?

"…I have never lied to you," Adam begins. Eventually. "And I have no intention to start." He turns to face Victor outright, something Victor is sure would be much more intimidating if he weren't so exhausted. "I want the same from you. I want you to promise you will be honest with me."

"…honesty can be a dangerous thing," Victor replies as he works his foot free.

Oh good, blood stains on his sock. And nearly worn through, there, at the big toe. He's certain there will be a corresponding blister.

"To men like you, perhaps," is Adam's reply.

Rude! He's not sure how he earned this—weren't they just in a loving—ahem, ' loving ' embrace?

…what a mess they are. Adam, dealing with his break down by picking fights, Victor, shouldering his pain and exhaustion with dark humor. A terrible combination, he's certain, but they must work with what they have.

"…I promise I will answer your questions truthfully," is Victor's reply, as he attempts to massage some circulation back into his foot. There's still feeling, in so much that it hurts to touch, which at least means the subcutaneous hasn't frozen. "I cannot promise I will always be truthful in your presence. And I will not be truthful when we are around others, and a lie will protect us."

"…you want to protect me?" Adam asks.

Victor's instinct is to dismiss and redirect, but he'd just made the damned promise. Instead, Victor stammers, before mirroring his creature and rubbing his thumb against the underside of his brow. "Good Lord, you had to begin with a hard one."

"It is not a hard question, Victor," Adam says, slowly advancing on him, "say 'yes' or 'no'."

"Yes," Victor says. Because that is what he just said! And to say otherwise would be breaking his stupid promise. "Yes, I want to. Protect you." Which is ridiculous, he knows. Only one of them can come to permanent harm, and it isn't Adam.

"…the why is what you do not want to tell me," Adam concludes, disheartened in feature and tone alike.

"I would have to know the answer to give it to you," Victor replies. Which is also true.

He leans over to push the other chair towards Adam, a clear invitation.

"…Am I a person?" Adam asks, as he lowers himself into the chair offered, "Victor?"

"…yes," Victor replies, warily.

"You hesitate."

"I do not expect you to believe me."

…a white lie, if it is a lie at all. What he expects is for it to be a trap of some kind, and he is on a rotten mood to deal with those sort of mind games, right now.

"And if we are to do this fairly," Victor continues, eager to change the subject, "for that is what you wish for, yes? Fairness between us? Then we should be taking turns."

Victor expects to be rebuffed, but Adam only considers him for a breath's length at most, before answering; "…ask, then."

"My question had not changed," says Victor, "what brought you to tears?"

Adam frowns and turns from him toward the table. He seems to be searching for his words, so Victor allows him this pause, and finally—finally—sheds his damn coat.

…oh, he was right to worry. Oh, God, he smells vile.

Victor is almost free of his waistcoat by the time Adam, haltingly, begins to answer;

"…it…down there, it. Felt like that night."

"Which?" Victor asks. Before Adam can protest the fairness--and his frown says he's about to, Victor adds, "Come now, I answered the questions that came from your question."

Adam looks as if he might argue further, but perhaps he is as tired as Victor, for he chooses instead to relent.

"…the. That night." Victor pauses his undressing to listen, and to watch Adam's hands turn and flex, there, in his lap. "When we." Another pause, then, "When you tried to shoot me."

Ah.

"The wedding night," Victor says, unable to raise his voice above a whisper.

"…yes," Adam replies, just as softly.

And then the memory sits heavily between them, and neither speak.

Soon, the grief is cloying, and Victor all but begs, "take your turn, I. Can wait to ask more."

Adam, thankfully, does not take long to settle on his next question; "…why were you nice to Miss Edith, but cruel to Humfrid."

…why on Earth is that the question—

"…I was not cruel—"

"You were," Adam presses. "You frightened him and you enjoyed it."

There is very little he can say he has enjoyed since his brother's ruined wedding night, and talking to a pock-faced little wastrel is nowhere on the list!

"Perhaps I was impatient," Victor replies, curtly, "but we—I was his customer. It is his duty to meet the needs I can pay for."

"…you used the silver to buy your right to frighten him."

Oh, for God's sake. "I acted in accordance to my station. Perhaps that looks like cruelty to you, because you are still learning the way of the world."

"…you have not answered my question; why were you nice to Miss Edith and not—"

"Oh, Dear God—" Victor swears aloud, throwing his sweat-stained waistcoat onto the table between them, "because…if I was rude to her, she would have refused us!"

"…ah. I see."

"And you are cross with me, now," Victor pronounces, gesturing to Adam before letting his hand fall heavily to the table.

"…I did not realize you enjoy cruelty for cruelty's sake," Adam replies, staring at his end of the table.

"That is not fair," Victor spits back, "it was to get the errand over and done with, not gratify me."

Adam looks less than convinced.

Fine. Fine! Victor would have preferred to have a nice, quiet evening, but if Adam wants to have the hard discussions, then they will.

"Did you intend to kill my brother?"

The question seems to shock. Good! Perhaps now he'll be a little more conservative when he next takes his turn.

"…no," Adam says. "I did not know you had one."

…oh.

He could have sworn…

"…I showed you to him, once," Victor says, working the knot of his assumptions out, aloud, "but. Only briefly. And only the once."

…Victor should have kept that unsaid. He is too tired for this conversation!

But it was honest! Awful, and honest, for that's all Victor honestly is.

"'Showed me to him'," Adam repeats, mocking, a mirthless smile tugging up the corners of his black stained lips. "And what did he think of me, Maker? Did I frighten him, too?"

"Of course you did," Victor grumbles back.

"Yes. Of course."

"…see, now, why lying is sometimes the kind thing to do?"

Adam sits back in his chair, regarding Victor with outright incredulity. "What do my feelings matter to you, Victor?"

No. No! He refuses. Not now, not tonight, ideally not ever.

"Would you prefer I not care at all?" Victor asks, absolutely breaking his promise and the unstated rules of the arrangement by answering a question with a question.

"I would understand that more," Adam replies, smile gone sharp, for now he's begun baring his teeth. "It is the you I have known. I do not trust you. Why should I, after you killed me in my sleep?"

"…you came back."

He is aware it is a bad response as he says it.

"I still felt it!" Adam cries, voice rumbling out of him at an inhuman timber.

"Do not yell," Victor hisses. "People will hear you."

Adam closes his mouth and has to take several deep breaths before he seems to regain control. "I. Still. Felt it," he says, in a harsh whisper. "The pain. And the fear, I feel it, and they linger! I fear the sons of my friend for the same reason—they shot me and I did not die immediately, but I could not move, I could barely breathe—"

And he seems near about working himself into tears again, so while it is not ideal, Victor finds he is in fact grateful that a series of knocks comes from the other side of their closed door, and interrupts him.

It startles Adam badly, enough that he knocks over his chair in his haste to stand.

"It's the staff," Victor tells him, hands held out and open, placating. "The water I asked for." Adam ducks his head, which Victor takes to mean he understands, but now the question becomes; "can you get it, or must I?"

Adam doesn't reply.

Victor will assume the answer, then, is 'you do it.'

"One moment!" he calls, and does his best to pull the damnable prosthetic back on in a timely manner. It is not a comfortable fit, but this shouldn't take less than a minute. Getting around Adam's chair legs is a bit of an undertaking, but he manages it, and does, eventually, hobble his way to open the door.

Two young women stand, waiting in the hallway, one with a small tray with the soap and washrags, and the other holding a basin of steaming, clear water. Neither look pleased to see him, but he plasters on a smile, regardless.

"Such timely service," he says, then motions to the floor by the table. "If you would set that there, please." The girls move quickly and efficiently, and with the blank faces of two well accustomed to providing service for those they may find arduous. Victor gives them his thanks, quite genuinely, and shuts the door again practically on their heels.

He allows himself a moment, there, forehead pressed to the wood, to feel the exhaustion in every fibrous tissue comprising his taxed muscles. The awful pressure of his weight against his stump, for his remaining foot is all pins and needles due to its superficial frostbite, and, forced to choose between the two, he'd rather have the ache.

He badly wishes to sleep.

He cannot, he'll ruin the clean sheets.

He'll ruin the sheets and he wants to be clean, and he's survived longer days than this.

He has survived longer days than this, and these conversations might as well happen while he is almost too tired to lie, anyway.

"…you may continue," Victor says, limping his way along the wall to the table, and then carefully around the basin to collapse in his chair. "But you must excuse me splitting my focus, for this grime must be dealt with." Which he will deal with in a moment, when he catches his breath. He motions vaguely in Adam's direction, and prompts; "you were explaining your deaths, and how frightening it is, for you."

There is another long silence, and in spite of himself, Victor almost considers it a blessing, and begins to drift.

Then Adam rights his chair, and stands, there, hands flexing against its back. And Victor must still be awake because he's aware of this. Ugh, right, he had things he wished to do, and the water is growing cold.

"I don't understand you," Adam says, as Victor pushes himself upright again. "I cannot tell if you listen, or care, or if you just know what to say."

"…you're the one who chose me as your companion," Victor mutters, fumbling the laces loose so he can push his prosthesis off again.

"Do you hate me? For choosing you?"

Heh. If only life were so simple.

"…hate is not the word," Victor replies.

"Then what is?"

"I don't know, Adam." Oh, good, frustration seems to be bringing him back around. Victor finds the strength to straighten out of his slouch, and begin shouldering out of his suspenders—which results in instant relief, oh, he had not realized how much those were starting to dig in. "I—I believe I should hate you. For William's sake, if nothing else. But he is not here." Then, because he is too tired to think better of it, he says, "Is it so hard to believe I do not want to be alone?"

"…no. I believe that."

"Well," Victor gives another vague gesture in Adam's direction, "I have that at least."

There is another stretch of silence, which Victor fills by slowly peeling the rest of his clothes off. Peripherally, he is aware of Adam shedding his coat and returning to sit in his chair. With him so close, Victor decides to leave his lower underclothes on. Of course, it is not that he is known for his modesty. It is simply what feels right, and it is a decision he is too tired to question. There is water and soap and a washrag, and he has waited so very long to acquire them, so he best use them.

Oh—Lord Jesus, that hurts his foot, he—He'll start with the ankles, he'll work his way back to that. Eventually.

"…what language—" Adam begins.

"No, no, it's my turn," Victor argues, instinctively—like he hadn't just been sitting in silence along side his creation. He doesn't even have a question in mind.

"You just asked your question," Adam replies. "I answered. It is my turn."

"That—" …did he? Oh, it doesn't matter. He doesn't actually care. "Fine," Victor says, his true focus on cleaning his remaining leg one inch at a time, "what language what?"

"What language do you speak when you are upset?"

…what langu—what?

What kind of riddle is this? Is he just so tired words aren't making sense anymore?

…He supposes it is possible Adam simply does not know the names of any language.

"…we're both speaking German, now," Victor replies, slowly, still unsure he has grasped the meaning of the question, "Deutsch. They are the same thing."

"But you do not speak Deutsch or German when you cry."

And just like that, Victor is wide awake.

And he has gone very still.

"…I don't speak at all during those fits."

"You do," says Adam, voice softening to almost mimic concern. "You may not know it, but you do. You talk to yourself."

"…and I have been doing that this whole time," Victor asks, carefully.

"Yes."

Victor throws the rag into the basin, causing water to splash over the edge and onto the floor, as well as on to his stinging, swelling foot.

He wants to scream. He does not, but only barely.

"And—what," he says, voice trembling with anger and the effort it is taking him not to dissolve into a genuine rage, "you simply…intended to keep that information to yourself?"

"…you dislike the truth, too, so I do not enjoy telling it to you."

Victor lets loose a peel of near manic laughter. It's almost nostalgic! Being this exhausted and this frustrated at this awful, uncaring, absolute pain in his ass.

"Right! Right, of course," he chuckles to himself as he fishes the stupid rag back out of the stupid water. "It's my fault."

"…what is the language?"

Oh, how dare he sound exasperated. The bastard doesn't even get tired!

"How am I to know," Victor asks, pushing himself upright yet once more to address his loathsome creation to his face, "when I had no idea I was talking in the first place?! I know several languages! <Was it English?> {Was it Swedish?} [Was it French?] /Was it—/"

"That one," Adam says, pointing, "the sentence before. [Vus eet Fweinch?]"

"God, your accent," Victor says before he can stop himself. And now that it's out there, he's not even sorry. That accent is abysmal. "French. [You believe I was speaking French]."

"Yes. That—that's the. Your voice changes. You say things differently. Especially the end of words."

Victor does not reply. He returns to washing instead, bent over and almost lightheaded from anger and position both.

This time the silence ends far too soon.

"…there's…when I threw you, it left a scar."

Victor laughs again. "Oh? Just the one? It's a miracle it did not kill me."

With his focus on his own leg, he does not see how Adam receives this information—and why would he care, it's just a fact of the matter. It shouldn't be surprising. And yet, when next he speaks, Adam's voice is hesitant and wavering. "It could've—I. I was not trying to kill you, I—"

"You just have a violent temper?" Victor offers, sarcastically.

A beat passes, and in that time, Adam reclaims his anger, his voice level again, and cold. "…better that than an explosive one."

That wasn't half bad. Actually, that is almost amusing. So Victor laughs, and it isn't entirely to mock him. "Did you argue this much with your friend or am I just special?"

"We never argued," Adam says. "He only ever showed me mercy and kindness."

Of course. Of course the man he found was better. A truer father, perhaps.

For Victor was the monster that Adam escaped.

…there was a time he would have only thought that in jest. Now…it is unquestionably true.

William would agree.

Adam continues, and, as he scrubs inch by inch up his leg, Victor listens, brought abruptly to heel by his own shame and grief.

"…the first time we spoke, I dropped his bottle of brandy. Then, I could not remember you, but part of me was certain I would be punished, and I was so afraid."

Yes, Victor would have been upset. It wouldn't have been brandy, of course, but the assumption is otherwise sound.

"He was not angry," Adam says, and there is such reverence in his voice. "He asked…if I was afraid. And he offered me his hand. He touched me and was not afraid to feel I was different. He asked me to stay, and to be his friend, and to consider him mine." His voice begins to shake, and quiet to just above a whisper. "He held me. Pet my hair."

His mother used to pet his hair.

"A saint of a man," Victor says, hears himself say. He's almost in that place again, present and yet not, just left of his own body.

"…he was a murderer, the same as us."

…and he is firmly back in his body. For all he can do, as he digests that statement, is stare at the man who spoke it into being.

"…you consider what you did to William—" But it had been an accident. He could deny it. Victor would, in his place.

"Of course. It does not matter our intention, we both took lives that night." Adam looks to his lap, clearly ashamed, and adds, "I had not realized I could have taken more."

How quickly he forgets; his creation is a better man than he is.

"…you did not realize throwing a man at furniture and walls could kill him."

…that was probably rude. He wasn't even trying to be, that time.

Thankfully, Adam seems only mildly insulted. "I know very little of people. Only what I've read in books, and what my friend taught me."

Everything he knows came from that man.

"…and what are colors to a blind man?" Victor reasons aloud.

"…what color is grass?" Adam asks, perhaps considering it a natural progression.

"Green. When it is alive. When winter comes and it dies, it turns brown." He's just rambling, now. "Snow is white."

"…there's a woman downstairs." Adam looks to the door as Victor's blood runs cold. "In a green dress. It reminded me of—"

"I beg you." It comes pulled from him, right from between his ribs. "I know who you speak of, but I cannot hear her name. Please."

Adam seems to consider this request. He goes around it, and it may be Victor deserves the pain that causes, but it is still so very cruel. "Why does green remind me of her?"

He doesn't have to answer.

…he doesn't, but his shame is too heavy. He must do something to ease it, or it may crush him.

It takes him…he isn't sure how long, really, to find the words, but somehow he manages, "she…wore green the day you met."

"Oh."

Just that. 'Oh.'

What else is there to say? He barely remembers her. Because of Victor.

"…I would—" Victor swallows, but the words come up and out, regardless; "I would take it back, if I could. All of it. All I've done to ruin…everything. I loved her…I loved her, and she hated me, for she thought I had killed you."

"…why did she care?"

This time, when Victor laughs, it is only so he does not return to weeping. "I don't know. I only know that she did."

Adam deserves to know her. She would want that. She…should still be around to know—

—no, he must stop. He must stop, he is so tired of crying.

"…give me time," he begs, after wiping the swell of threatened tears from his eyes. "It hurts to think of her. Maybe with time, I will remember without…wanting to scream and never stop." He pronounces it like it is a joke.

Somewhere, years ago, he learned that is what you do, when you want to disguise a true pain. And you say it jovially, without flinching, because then they will believe they cannot use it against you.

"…I would have mourned you, if you had died by my hand."

…he can't. He can't. He can't.

Not on the tail of thoughts of her. Not after being reminded of why he is wicked and undeserving.

Victor digs up anything, any other feeling than the—the delicate, fragile thing those words try to ensnare. He digs, and finds sarcasm, and, eyes still damp from the memory of his crimes, spits the words out before anything else can escape.

"No, you would have mourned the lost chance at a companion."

Poison, so he will never return to this well.

"…both can be true," Adam murmurs, as if to spite him. "I dread the day, when I will watch you take your final breath. I…" Victor raises his eyes just high enough to see Adam's hands flexing in his lap. He dares go no further. "…downstairs," Adam continues, "I could not stop thinking that sssomething would happen, and I. I would have to carry you, bleeding, through all those pppeople. That you would die, and I would be…alone."

"…Better this, than its absence," Victor quotes, for the words have been there, echoing in his mind, since he thought of poison.

How had he managed to forget that Adam had already, knowingly, chosen his poison?

"…yes."

"On that at least, we can agree."

Saying it leaves him feeling hollow.

Oh, how he wishes that was the end of it. It feels like it should be. What else is there in him left to give?

"…you could find another," Adam says. "If I let you."

…why, in God's name, is he saying this, now? Does he realize how…absolutely absurd he sounds?

"But you will not do that," Victor pronounces carefully, "so what does it matter?"

"…it does matter," Adam says, quietly. "It matters to me."

How can he be both so sharp and so painfully stupid?

This time, Victor manages to stop himself from throwing the cloth and wasting more of the water. It is a near thing. And he needs several long seconds before he can speak without beginning with an insult.

"Who would I choose?" Victor asks, again drawing back to full height, damp only up to his knee. "Please, tell me, where is this person I could run to?"

Adam looks both confused and insulted. "How am I to know?"

"There isn't one," Victor replies, biting each word off for emphasis. "My family is dead. I keep no friends. If you let me go, I--" He gestures open handed to the wall, the windows, the general notion of 'outside', "I'd throw myself in a river by day's end."

"…to be with them?" Adam asks.

Victor gives a very inelegant snort. "We both know I will not follow them to Heaven." He returns to his washing, working the cloth in behind his knee, against the popliteal fossa, adding, "I have broken every commandment, and worse, brought a god to earth, to spite my own maker."

He does not realize the silence that follows is one of utter shock. Then Adam speaks, and his voice is thin; "…wh—you. you do not mean—"

Victor considers that he should not be saying this.

No, they've said most everything else, why not now? Why not?

"You are a demi-god if nothing else." And he continues to wash.

"No, I'm not."

Well, Adam, unfortunately, believing something does not make it true.

…it is something Victor can only think because he's slipping sideways again, and it seems his emotions are not coming with him.

"By man's limited understanding, you are. You cannot die and your strength is inhuman. Gods have been named such for less."

There is the sound of his washing, and nothing else, for a full minute.

"…I…I would rather I were just a man," Adam says, barely above a whisper.

He has everything a man has, what is he lacking?

…Victor really is tired. That took far too long to remember.

"…do you want to die?" he asks.

"…yes," Adam's voice is quiet at first, but then it rises, speaking almost breathless in his haste, "Yes. I keep--when I'm killed, I am allowed a taste of oblivion, and it is peaceful. It is good. But I always wake up."

"…it is your Lymphatic system." It's simple enough to recite, so he does; "The silver we have was used to channel lightning straight into that system, and it still holds that impossible energy, now. But, it is possible, if I cut it out of you fast enough, if I remove what is keeping you immortal, you would die."

Adam considers this. Victor continues to wash.

"…you would be alone," Adam finally says.

"Yes," Victor replies, trying very, very hard to stay in that place where he does not care, "and I would follow you soon after, we've established this."

"…do you…do you think I will go where other men go?"

See, these are the questions he's—well, no, he isn't capable of giving an answer, but he does prefer this one to the majority of what's come before.

"That I cannot tell you. But I highly doubt you will join me in the fires of hell."

"…why?" Adam asks. "Why do you want to die, if you believe you will go there?"

It almost gets him to crack. He doesn't understand how this creature has the capacity left to care.

"How else am I to atone?" Victor asks, plainly. As if they are discussing something banal, like the weather.

"…by being a good person?" Adam offers.

Damn him, he really will not let Victor rest.

So Victor laughs again, this time a single, bitter note. "I thought I already told you; there is no goodness in my heart."

"…that isn't true."

No. It is the truth. He needs it to be.

"I thought you of all people would agree."

"You are frustrating," Adam replies, "and at times cruel, but that is not the same as not being good. I have noticed how you've changed. If you only practiced—"

"—but you do understand that I do it for myself," Victor cuts in, smiling now, voice light and quick so he can pretend he is not threatening to break apart. "To avoid more pain. Treating you kindly is also to my benefit, and that is all I care about."

"…you would not tell me this, were it true."

"You made me promise to be honest."

Adam begins to slowly shake his head. "Then if it were true, you would have stayed silent. Why are you trying to upset me?"

"I'm not," Victor lies. "I'm saying you are wrong. Even the good things I do, I do for myself. You wish to understand me, and that is all there is to understand."

And that is the truth. That is the whole of him. That is all he will ever amount to.

"It does not benefit you to tell me this," says his creation, who is too smart for his own good.

"Then maybe I am tired of lying," Victor says, his smile curdling, and his motion too forceful when he wets the rag again. "To myself most of all."

"…you are still. The new lie is that you cannot be redeemed."

Victor is going to scream.

"…You want to know the truth?" he asks, knowing already what he will say and that he must get them off this topic before it kills him.

"Yes," Adam says, earnestly. "I do."

"The truth is," Victor picks up one of the dry washrags and flings petulantly it at Adam's chest. It is mildly gratifying that the action makes the man flinch. "You smell terrible and should be washing. And I'm not answering another question until you do. Go on. Wet your cloth, rub it against the soap—"

"…I know how to wash, Victor."

"You don't smell like it. Please," he motions to basin between them, "prove me wrong."

Chapter Text

Adam begins by cleaning his hands.

Victor, of course, monitors this closely; it is perhaps the only rubric he'll have regarding his creation's understanding of personal hygiene. And he must admit, he is surprised at just how thorough Adam is; taking the time to clean between his fingers and check beneath his yellowed nails for any lingering dirt.

"…Do you always wash your hands so thoroughly?" Victor asks, taking his own care in the wording of the question, for he is genuinely curious as to the answer, and does not want to risk triggering a sarcastic response.

"Yes," Adam says. "You cannot touch books with dirty hands."

"…no. No, you cannot," Victor agrees. "Now—keep that up while you do the rest of you."

"…all of me?" Adam asks.

"Yes, 'all of you'," Victor replies in a somewhat mocking, sing-song cadence. He's returned to his own cleaning, having finally reached his upper leg.

"…why?"

"Do you not smell yourself?" Victor asks. "Take your clothes off; you've blood dried all down your front from that little demonstration of yours. How many other deaths have there been? I'm certain they've left their own evidence on you. Never mind your sweat."

…he's fairly certain Adam sweats.

A mystery to solve when he is not bone tired and already occupied.

Adam makes no move to disrobe.

"…shy? Are we?" Victor asks. "Come now, there's nothing I haven't seen before."

Victor's creation raises his eyes from the floor and levels his maker with a distrusting glower.

"…I will wait until you finish," Adam says.

"…well," replies Victor, "you know what happens now, don't you?" His tone is almost playful, though it has been and continues to be unquestionably insincere and almost entirely for Victor's own amusement.

"No…" Adam begins, then his confusion shifts abruptly to irritation; "now, you will ask why I want to wait."

"Wonderful use of that brain I gave you," Victor replies.

"I do not want to be nude around you," Adam says, as he returns his sodden, but barely used washrag to the tray.

"…I have nowhere else to go," Victor points out, "so what are you to do? Lay around in dirty clothes, forcing me to wash again after each interaction?"

"I will wait for you to be finished. You will then lie on the bed and turn away."

"…this is ridiculous," Victor states, genuinely chuckling at the absurdity. "I know what you look like."

"…the last time I was nude around you, I was chained and beaten. By you."

"…you weren't nude—"

"You will finish. Lie on the bed. And turn away, Victor. Until I say otherwise."

"Or what?" Victor asks. He lets the washrag drop and gives Adam his full attention, eyebrows raised expectantly, arms propped on his knees, and a smile he has been told is infuriating to be on the other end of curling one side of his mouth higher than the other. "What happens if I break your rules, jailer?"

Adam draws in a slow breath, those dark eyes trailing over Victor in a way that makes—

—that makes Victor think of Harlander's shattered occipital and parietal bone, and the mess that leaked forth from the hole, for that memory only fills him with frustration and disgust, which, blessedly, mitigates what might have been an annoying and possibly embarrassing physical reaction to his present circumstances.

"Which hand do you use most?" Adam asks.

"My—my dominant hand?" Victor asks. "My right."

"…I have always struggled with which is left and which is right," Adam says, almost conversationally. "If you break my rules, I will break your left hand," he concludes. And smiles at Victor a tight, hateful smile. "Whether I choose correctly..."

"Yes, yes, you're very frightening," Victor says, fishing the washrag back out of the water to wiggle it dismissively in Adam's direction. Whether it distracts from the pallor Victor can feel leeching the warmth from his complexion in response to that very real threat, he cannot say. "Your rules or pain. Heard."

Adam doesn't reply, and when next Victor glances to him, his creation has returned to frowning at the table.

"…finding no joy in threatening bodily harm?" Victor asks him.

"…finish cleaning, Victor." And Adam stands and crosses to one of the windows. Victor considers warning him he's likely to frighten whoever might be passing on the street, if he just stands there, being nearly taller than the window frame itself and having a corpse's complexion, besides, but decides he is too tired and too annoyed to extend the effort required to start what will likely result in yet another fight.

He'll just get clean and then retire to bed, until they send supper up.

The water is disgusting by the time he's reached his neck and shoulders. Far too dirty to use for his hair, and far too dirty for Adam's uses, either.

"We need another basin of water sent up," Victor announces. He's more to say, an important question to ask, but he's abruptly caught in a jaw-cracking yawn. As if he were not already acutely aware of his own exhaustion. He does not need his body interrupting him to signal something he already knows.

"Can you go down to tell the help?" he manages, before another yawn breaks through.

Adam's initial reply is a yawn of his own, which Victor should not find amusing, but does, for it has always amused him how yawning spreads like a sickness between hosts. And it seems to catch Adam entirely off guard, which results in a very endearing—

—Hardlander. Victor is thinking of Harlander and his stupid smile and his stupid fox pelt and his stupid cigarette, making his stupid comments no one wants to hear. And not thinking about his creation's face nor his own opinions on the creature's expressions.

"…you think I should?" Adam asks, once his body is no longer being hijacked by impulse. "…they will not…?"

"…ah, right. The tavern. All of those people." Damn it. Finally clean and he'll have to put his dirty clothes right back on.

"…I can do it quickly, I only…I fear…" Adam trails off, nervously.

"…scaring the maids?"

"…yes."

"Adam. Any woman working in this building has faced much worse than a very tall, scarred man asking them quietly and politely for aid. Your scent will offend them more than your countenance, this I assure you."

Adam considers this. Victor massages absently at his stump, awaiting his answer.

"…a fresh basin of—of water," Adam says, finally.

"Two, if they can spare a smaller one. We'll use that one for our hair."

Adam takes one of the greasy locks flowing from his own scalp and considers it. "…it must be washed, too?"

"Yes. You will look and feel much better once it's all over," he assures his creation, nearly managing to even sound sincere. "Oh—and ask after laundry services. I was so tired, I forgot about that entirely."

"…should I return the first basin?"

Victor gestures at it with the air of 'do as you like'.

So, Adam, looking somewhat smaller without his pelt covered coat, leaves with the basin of used wash water in tow.

It is not until near a whole minute has passed that Victor remembers there's visible blood stains and bullet holes peppering Adam's undershirt and vest—a sight his coat usually obscures.

Well…

Too late to do anything about that now.

Victor closes his eyes and leans back, intending to doze.

Alas, his mind does not let him.

He's always had a loud, impatient mind, constantly hungry for new information, constantly tearing everything he sees and experiences into smaller pieces to examine and classify and learn from. It has been his blessing and his curse in equal measure, and it is being extremely unhelpful right now.

Yes, clearly he has formed some…unwilling and ill-fated attraction to his captor and creation. The why is easy enough to discern; the man was made, piece by piece, to embody both man's strength and man's beauty.

And maybe Victor…has a type.

And maybe he let that inform one too many choices in Adam's construction.

It is obnoxiously clear in hindsight. Especially now, when his mind is fixated on comparing Adam to every other person Victor has felt this way about.

…no, Elizabeth is not on the list.

He did feel for her! Of course he did, and he had been certain what they had—

Victor knew his attraction to her was genuine, that had never been in doubt, but that attraction never overcame him like a sickness. Like a fever. It never felt cloying and oppressive and something foreign set upon him that he could not ignore. It never felt sinful.

But there had been others. All men. Always men, with soft voices and soulful eyes. Taller men. Educated men. Gentlemen, who extended others kindnesses as easy as breathing. Who liked history and poetry and all the beautiful things man has made and Victor has never had time for. Who saw the world in an entirely different light than Victor, and made him wish to understand it in ways he would never be compelled to on his own. Men he wanted to understand, not to better navigate around them or through them to Victor's benefit, but because he found them fascinating in and of themselves.

God, but there had been too many at University.

And yes, there were even times when Victor acted on that dreadful attraction.

…had he brought Henry's letters with him to the Tower? No—no those would still be in the hidden compartment in the south wall of his flat. He hasn't gone through them in years. He doesn't know what Henry has made of himself, now. Happily married with several offspring, he'd wager. Henry never lacked in appeal to the fairer sex.

But there had been a time when Henry sought Victor's attentions instead. God only knows why. It was a relationship Victor eventually destroyed, for that is truly all he is good at. Destruction. But there had been a time…

…he'd almost considered it love.

Henry called it such. But Henry was a hopeless romantic who wanted to believe in things like soulmates and destiny and always went on and on about Jesus healing that Roman soldier's partner, and how the words used implied they were both sodomites, so clearly everything was fine, and they were not breaking the very rules of nature by acting on a mutual attraction. And that had been endearing, at the time. Victor even thinks he'd started to believe it.

But love was never more important than the work.

And Henry had never liked the work. He was devout in ways Victor never was and when he fully grasped the totality of his goals, Henry was truly appalled. That was the sin too far. Men could fraternize and mock God with their coupling, but men could never challenge God by attempting to govern life and death themselves.

And more, what they had threatened Victor's access to the resources and connections necessary to continue the work. The church always kept its fingers tightly around the throat of academia, and he could not trust others to turn a blind eye—not after making so many enemies. And expulsion was not the worst fate they could have garnered. There could have been an arrest, a trial, and a hanging, had they been outed as inverts to the local authorities.

Henry had begged for Victor to abandon the work and run away with him to France, where such couplings had been decriminalized since before Napoleon.

And Victor had been furious. He had shared more with Henry than he had anyone before, and this was his reaction? The disgust with Victor's work was one thing, but a demand to abandon it? All for, what, the chance to legally take it up the ass whenever they fancied? They were not animals. They did not need to submit to their base desires. Henry was an amusing distraction that Victor had allowed too close. That was all.

At least that had been what Victor had told him. That is what Victor told himself.

It was eight months better forgotten, and Victor had managed to avoid entangling his life similarly with the following men he could not help but lure into bed.

…where would he be, if he had only listened?

Not here, certainly. Not grappling with his perversions turning upon his own creation.

The door jostles, startling Victor badly, driving a cold spike of fear through him that his misdeeds will be discovered, as though his line of thought was something tangible someone could stumble upon simply by entering the room.

This is why he knew it was sinful. This fear. This anxiety that he has always felt. Even in his own head, he is not safe.

But he pushes all that aside as Adam enters, a shy smile pulling at his lips, and what looks to be a laundry bag in his hand.

"We set it out, and they collect it and rrreturn it to us come morning," he explains as he hands it to Victor.

"Yes, I know," Victor replies, setting the bag aside to ensure nothing is left in his pockets before shoving his pants, undershirt and dress shirt inside. His waist and tailcoat are already ruined, and would be ruined further by the abrasive soaps he suspects the establishment uses while doing laundry by bulk. Best to just discard them entirely.

"Your pants are intact, yes?" Victor asks, once his own clothes have been seen to. Adam nods. "Good, those can be washed. Your shirt, however, is not salvageable."

"…what will we do with it?" Adam asks with an odd air of concern.

"…we will throw it away," Victor replies.

"No."

"…Adam," Victor begins.

"No," Adam states, firmly. "My—my friend gave me these clothes, I will not throw them away."

"Your friend would not want you to—"

"Silence," Adam orders, taking a single step toward Victor and leveling an accusing finger at him. "Do not—do not speak to me of him as if you knew him. There is nothing the two of you share."

"…then I will get you a bag to keep it in," Victor says. "Will that suffice?"

Adam doesn't answer. He returns to the window, disposition sour, that small, sweet smile he had entered the room with entirely erased.

It is a sobering reminder—one Victor hopes curtails this unwanted attraction.

Adam hates him, after all, and for good reason. And how are they to couple if the man cannot stand the thought of being naked in Victor's presence?

No, this is doomed from the outset. What he wants will never, never happen.

And that should matter. That should be enough to snuff out any passion.

…who is he trying to fool? He did not stop loving Elizabeth, who hated him just as vehemently and for many of the same reasons.

This malady will linger. It may even worsen, as they continue to collect worldly comforts and the pain from their travels begins to fade. As Adam's company becomes a normality. An immutable fact of life.

Victor must approach it as he would any other sickness and devise a treatment for himself. Some way to mitigate the symptoms, so that they do not interfere with his day to day, and his goals.

And so Adam will never know.

Adam can never, never know.

Chapter Text

The water arrives, and Victor washes his hair, and it feels delightful.

He does not offer to help Adam with his, because quite frankly he does not trust himself at this moment. And besides, Adam is cross with him.

…and having Victor's hands on his head may be yet another intolerable act.

…but he had been gentle when he—

It does not matter. It doesn't! It does not matter.

Victor pulls his false leg on just long enough to reach the bed. He had intended to lay atop the covers, but this close to the window, and this far from the furnace, he cannot handle the chill. His foot protests, but the pain is a focus and Victor will utilize it.

It is something to think about besides Adam undressing and dragging a wet cloth over his body. Or how once he was so new and inept, Victor had to see to his cleaning, himself.

…not unlike a parent washing their child.

…oh good God, he hadn't even considered the matter of incest.

Is that what this is? If Adam is a person and not a thing, enough for Victor to desire him, does that not also mean he is Victor's…son?

Oh, that thought makes his empty stomach cramp in a very unpleasant way.

But revulsion cannot change what is true. Victor created Adam. Brought him to life in a perverse and morbid way, yes, but life all the same. Of course, Victor had always intended him to be a man, not a child, but—

That is what Adam had been.

A child in an adult's body.

Not a beast, not even an imbecile, but a child.

Does it matter if Victor never saw him that way? Does it matter that he never attempted to fill a paternal role? Does it change anything at all that he treated him more as a captive animal than a person?

Victor does not know.

He knows only that the thought of being a father, Adam's father, awakens such dread inside him.

…perhaps this is for the best. Perhaps he should be grateful, and treat this repulsion as a gift. Now his body is reacting correctly to the thought of bedding his creation.

The though is repulsive to him; he can only imagine how vulgar it might seem to Adam.

If he thinks of himself as father, his own father, and Adam as himself—a child gifted with a resourceful mind but a child all the same—then—

His father had not…but had he wished to—

—the way he had touched Victor, as he stalked about the library. That unloving, possessive touch that only ever made Victor wish he were anywhere else—

That touch, twisted toward perversion, the desire to lay claim to Victor entirely—

There is nothing in his stomach, but that matters little. He will retch up gastric acid all the same, if he does not abandon that horrid thought, here and now.

And it could be the same for Adam. That is what Victor must remember.

It is good and right that the very idea makes him physically ill.

A father's touch is not a loving one. And perhaps it should not be.

It certainly cannot be when expressed by the likes of Victor.

Victor holds himself, as he turns the truth over in his mind. As he shivers and swallows down the bile his digestive tract attempts again and again to expel.

He…he doesn't want to act as father. He…isn't sure what that even looks like, what he would even do. He cannot use his own father as a guide—it would only prove to make him yet more intolerable to his s—

His. His son. Yet more intolerable to his son.

It just—it feels so wrong.

Victor has no right to be a father.

Had he only considered that when his years of toil were finally bearing fruit! Had he only stopped and considered the ramifications of his actions, for himself and the corpse he wished to bring to life!

…but he had expected a man. A fully grown man. He had not set out to make his own child, he—

He—oh god. He hadn't—he wasn't—

—there are desires inside Victor that he has always endeavored to bury. Desires that cannot be considered, let alone acted upon. Having a child is one of them. No, creating a child, giving them life, being their very source, and nurturing them as his mother had—

Victor is not and will never be a mother.

But he had set out to wrench the properties of life from the hands of an uncaring God, who sentenced them all to death, and had created only one avenue through which life could emerge. A God that had denied Victor that role.

Adam is living proof one does not need a womb to produce life.

But Victor is not his mother, he cannot be, he cannot.

Oh, he should not have dug this deep. He should not have unearthed this wretched piece of him. But somehow, buried as it was, ignored and maligned, it still managed to taint his pursuits. To bend him towards this mockery of birth. To make him believe he had any right to usurp something so fundamental, and so innately female.

…and it had produced a demigod. An undying man, who considered his own immortality as no gift, but a wicked curse.

What mother brings a child into this world only for it to beg for death?

He is a failure on all fronts. He is an abomination, begetting an unholy son. Again and again he is reminded that his desires are wicked and should not be met.

He does not know how long he lies there, intentionally making himself miserable. Punishing himself for his crimes. His sins. Sins of thought and deed, both.

Adam finishes his washing before their dinner arrives, and without warning or preamble, he tucks himself against Victor's back and cages him in with a still-damp arm.

There are of course a sheet and quilt between them, but Victor is almost certain Adam is still nude.

I would not crawl into my father's bed for anything, let alone comfort.

Must I live knowing none at all? No. I will take this poisonous thing between us, Victor—

"What upsets you?" Adam asks, hand pawing for Victor's own, but cannot find it, for Victor has wrapped his own arms so tight around himself.

"I cannot," Victor says. And then repeats himself, ensuring he says it in German, for he apparently cannot tell when he has slipped into his native French.

Mother's language.

"…would you prefer not to be held?" Adam asks.

Victor should agree.

What does it mean, that it would be a lie?

There is no fire in him now, no animal need, no poisonous desire.

And yet still, he wishes to be held.

Does that make this singular desire…pure?

He has no way to know, but the thought is soothing. The possibility there is something in him that is not twisted and inverted and wrong.

…God, but he is so tired.

"Stay," Victor says, for how else will he sleep?

Adam holds him just a little bit tighter.

Victor's last thought before slipping beyond consciousness is that his creation is so very easy to love.

He awakes, how much later he cannot say, cold and alone.

Adam is gone, but so is the quilt.

…and there is the scent of food.

There is the familiar clink of cutlery against a plate.

Victor turns to find Adam hunched over the table, quilt wrapped around him and pulled all the way up to his armpits. If he is looming over their dinner, Victor can only guess, for the table is entirely lost behind his quilted toga.

Then, as Victor scoots to the opposite of the bed, Adam makes a small, pleased little sound. And it hits Victor in the sternum and embeds itself there, like a pebble in the treads of a boot.

And he just has to Sit here and pretend to not react. Swallow the urge to tease or compliment. Smother the desire to find similar ways to produce such a sweet little sound.

He had figured out a way to go about this before he'd fallen asleep, but now he cannot remember what it was.

All he can do is push on, and have an excuse at the ready should his creation become curious, or worse, suspicious.

…oh. That's right. He was thinking of—

Well, he cannot do that now, or he'll entirely lose his appetite.

Victor sighs, and that appears enough to startle Adam, for he whips his head around, a fork still clenched between his teeth. Dark eyes wide, clean hair chasing its movement to fall against his other cheek, settling around his neck and shoulders like silk.

Come on, man, keep it together.

"Leave any for me?" Victor asks, attempting to sound dry and unaffected, rather than increasingly endeared.

To answer, Adam steps to the side to reveal the tray, their two plates, and the two bottles of milk Victor had requested when booking their room.

The sight awakens Victor's hunger, reminding him he has lived on barely a meal a day for too long, now.

Victor nearly attempts to stand, to cross to the table and finally break his fast, but reality asserts itself without remorse, and he remembers he has paid for his sins with flesh. He curses himself and the stupid, missing leg and begins searching for where he'd left his prosthesis.

"Victor."

He turns, still straddling the middle of the twin single beds they were provided, to see Adam offering a plate and bottle with either hand.

"Thank you, Adam," he says as he swings his leg back over the edge of the bed and accepts both.

"It's good," Adam assures.

And that is the totality of their conversation. They attend to their dinners, Victor on the bed and Adam at the table. With the quilt still pulled to his armpits like a bolt of fabric still several steps short of becoming a dress.

His hair is a lighter shade of auburn, now that it is clean. It pools around his shoulders and flows down, nearly long enough to reach his forth thoracic vertebrae.

Victor accepts that he wishes to touch it and cannot. He finds himself hoping Adam will continue to allow it to grow.

Then a comparison comes and he quickly abandons such thoughts. Whether his hair is indeed the same shade of muted red-orange as hers, Victor refuses to speculate.

Victor tries to finish first, so that he can return to sleep, or the appearance of sleep, at the very least, before Adam can level at him yet another question. Victor is not in the mood for more discussions, or revelations, or tearful confessions. Not today.

Mercifully, Adam does not press for these things, either.

And so, their night draws to a quiet close.

If only his mind would quiet and allow him to sleep.

Chapter Text

The first time Victor woke up cold and alone, his initial reaction had been concern.

The second time Victor awakes cold and alone, his reaction settles almost immediately into irritation.

Finding Adam is a non-issue; he's huddled at the window with the quilt tucked tight around his shoulders, knees drawn to his chest as he peers out the frosted pane. A few slivers of dawn's light catch in his hair and warm the edges of his heavy brow and sharp cheeks. His left eye glows like a sunrise all its own.

Yes, wonderful, very pretty, what the hell does he think he's doing out of bed?

"Adam? 's barely sunrise." Which is too early. The market won't open for at least two more hours. That's two more hours Victor intended to sleep through.

"…did you not hear it?" Adam asks, deep voice hushed to just a rumble. "It was so loud."

"What was?" Victor asks, as he begins working the crusted layer of rheum from around the corner lashes of one eye, then the other.

"The…the scream. The—"

Somewhere nearby, perhaps two blocks away at most, a rooster crows. Adam points emphatically at the window, dark eyes wide and worried.

"That," Adam hisses.

"That is just a rooster," Victor says with a limp, dismissive wave of one hand. "Male chicken. Bird. It does that."

"…it screams?" Adam presses, needlessly skeptical. Can he not tell Victor is too tired to be anything but truthful right now? And what would he gain by lying about something so mundane and trivial?

"Yes. At dawn. Every morning. It's God awful. Now—will you bring the quilt back? At least until they return our clothes."

It is, thankfully, the only coaxing required. Adam returns to bed and Victor faces away so the quilt toga may be retired as fashion and make its anticipated return as their shared bedding.

A few words are exchanged, mostly how no, not all birds sing, but all of them scream, some just have more melodic screams than others. This is followed immediately by the question; will there be roosters in Edinburgh. The unfortunate answer to that is 'yes'. While Adam sulks over this new revelation, Victor settles into a doze, there, comfortably trapped inside the cage of Adam's arms, pleased by the knowledge his creation is more discerning about his favored animals than he first appeared.

Some time later—an hour or more, he was not paying strict attention—there is a polite knock on their doorway. Adam leaves Victor to investigate, quilt of course in tow, and is pleased to find the bag of freshly laundered clothes and a breakfast tray waiting patiently on the hall floor for him to collect.

It is a simple but filling breakfast of lightly sweetened porridge, which Victor can only finish half of before his stomach, still too used to fasting, begins to protest.

Adam has no such issues and is happy to finish Victor's portion for him, murmuring now and then about the delightful taste.

It may be his first taste of sugar, Victor realizes. For where else would he have access to such a delicacy? Old blind hermits are not known for their indulgences and luxuries.

Something else to look for, perhaps, should Victor have money left at hand after seeing to their necessities.

"I'd prefer you stay here," Victor says, as he begins to dress. He had been right about the laundry soap; it has scored the month of constant wear from the fabric, in exchange for it all taking on a stiff, abrasive texture. He can only hope there will be softer fabrics on offer, today, so he can put a swift end to the suffering his current clothes will level upon him.

"Miss Edith said the books—" Adam begins.

"Are on this street. Yes," Victor agrees, "But so too a small horde of strangers, just as interested in them. Why not let me select a few books and have them sent up to you? Hmm? I can make quick work of it."

Adam considers this as he, almost absently, pulls his newly returned and laundered trousers on, the quilt protecting the rest of his modesty. "…if there is poetry," he says, and Victor nods, understanding his meaning.

"Poetry, a German dictionary, and a German to English dictionary," Victor recites, already having decided where to direct Adam's budding education. "And something in English for you to practice on, should the Fates allow."

"The Fates?"

Oh, damn it. Victor must be more careful. He hasn't the time or patience to play teacher, today.

"A story," he says, underplaying the cultural importance as much as he can without appearing too insincere. "Three women who control destiny. They are not real, mind."

"…yes, I know what a story is," Adam replies.

"But some stories are true," Victor counters.

"If they were real, you'd curse them more," Adam pronounces.

"…true. But the arrangement? It's satisfactory?"

"…how will you balance?"

"I will manage," Victor assures him. "Is there anything besides the books you would want?"

Adam stares at him a moment before daring, with an air of one watching prey straying closer to its trap, "'Anything'?"

"Within reason," Victor clarifies.

"…something to—to practice writing in," Adam says, after a moment's thought.

"A good idea," Victor says. "It may be a high ask in such a small town, but if I cannot find it here, we'll look again in the next town."

"How many towns until Edinburgh?"

Always the hard questions. Always, with him.

Victor pauses in re-lacing the harness holding his prosthetic leg in place to give a heavy sigh. "Too many. I will be looking for a map, as well. It will make everything so much easier, going forward."

"Where is it?" Adam presses, adding on, "generally," in a very obvious bid to keep Victor from refusing to speculate outright.

"North west. And we must take a boat to it, for it is an island."

"…is the lake it is in bigger than the--the tower's?"

Good Lord, Victor does not have it in him to explain the myriad of classifications in regard to bodies of water.

"We will discuss it later," Victor says. "You can always ask me later."

It isn't as though Adam won't know where to find him.

"Victor?"

He has just shrugged his coat back on—musky and clumping but on the whole the best protection from the cold he could hope for—and is pulling back on Mother's gloves when Adam calls to him from his quilt cocoon on the bed.

"Yes, Adam?" He asks, irritation beginning to buzz under his skin—although that might be from the scratchy shirt.

"…you will come back?"

Victor draws in a breath and then pushes it back out again through his—likely crooked, not that he has had the opportunity to check in the last month—nose. Then he turns to address his creation;

"Of course. I've nowhere to go you would not find me."

It seems Adam is expecting more, or rather is unsure how to feel about Victor's answer, just from the fidgeting and posture.

"…neither of us want to be alone," Victor adds.

That earns him a hesitant nod, but at least Adam's shoulders appear to relax.

And with that, Victor is off to do their shopping.

Good God, but he wishes he could just pay someone else to do this nonsense for him.

Alas, he does not have access to such funds, nor does he know this market well enough to direct a servant to a specific stall or item. He'll have to go searching for it himself.

It's almost nostalgic.

Victor loathes nostalgia.

The book seller has a meager selection, all of it over priced. Victor has to haggle with him for what feels like a small eternity to bring the figures down to something approaching reasonable.

The map of Europe that can be folded into a small, unassuming booklet, he just pockets outright while the man's back is turned. It makes them even, as far as Victor cares.

And he is so glad he did not just hand Adam a fist full of francs and left him to fend for himself—that would have been an unmitigated disaster.

Victor returns to the hotel's lobby to instruct the hostess to send his purchases upstairs to his companion, map included.

And then he is off to get the rest.

His shopping list is modest, but every item is of importance for one reason or another, and anything he cannot find will toss his plans into disarray.

First and most importantly; clothes for he and Adam, with an extra pair of shirt and trousers that can be later cannibalized to lengthen Adam's clothes, so Victor's creation will actually have some clothing that fits him.

There is no time or room in their budget for a tailor, so he is limited to whatever is being sold second hand.

Then; a sewing kit, anything remotely resembling grooming tools, a mirror, a cane, and, if God has mercy, a pair of shoes.

It annoys him, how closely this errand echoes his first trip to market after moving to Edinburgh. He has the same low but consistant anxiety around the meager funds he has at hand, and dread over the very real possibility he will be forced to spend it all to acquire what he needs.

Then, it had been pride, not necessity.

Victor saw little issue in using his late father's money to purchase his flat outright, but that is where his willingness to dip into his inheritance ended. The rest he would do on his own.

It was a challenge at first, but like every challenge before and after it, Victor rolled up his sleeves and threw himself single-mindedly at the problem.

He had not been wealthy, but he had managed 'comfortable'. Eventually. It meant cutting out most any luxury—in the first few years, that would often include meals—but he felt he was better for it. He knew what things were worth, what was essential and what he could live without.

The only things one might mistake for luxuries were his research materials. Those were his exception. He'd happily go hungry for a few days in exchange for a newly published journal or carefully rendered sculpture.

And everything he owned, he'd earned. All but the flat itself, and a handful of items taken from the manor.

(But it would not have impressed father at all. No, he would have considered it a single step above living in squalor, and say as much before condesending to cross the stone gate's threshold.

And he would have started right into a lecture the moment he realized Victor had chosen a flat on butcher's row intentionally.

The man had no sense of humor.

Victor did have purely practical reasons for the location, of course. Aftet all, father, a man must make ends meet. What else was he to do while he worked towards his license, towards that day he could finally, legally charge for his skills as a surgeon? The skills that had been so lovingly drilled into him since adolescence did have other, marketable usages.)

…it's all rubble now. All but the flat itself, and a few odds and ends that did not need to follow him to the Tower.

All his books, his notes, his anatomical specimines and busts, his long, beautiful, double sided drafting table he'd managed to purchase at a fraction of its worth through a connection at the University.

All blown to pieces, because Victor…

In hindsight, he doesn't even know why he did it. Hate for his creation, yes. A need to destroy the notes that led to said creation, obviously.

But why had he torched the rest?

Madness is the only answer. Madness, insomnia, and a terrible, poisonous ego that Victor would carve out of himself, if he only knew how.

Anyway, finding new shoes was indeed too much to ask for. Not enough leather on offer, he assumes. There are some pelts for sale, only through the one vender, but they do look like quality—

—it can't be.

"…is this a wolf hide?" Victor asks the sullen looking vender manning the stall.

"Yes, sir," the vender replies.

The vender with a pair of braids peeking out from the bottom of his winter hat, his hair the color of a sunset.

Victor thanks him, buys nothing from him, takes what he has managed to procure, and returns to the hotel.

He does not tell Adam. For really, what would it do beyond upset him?

And he is in such a good mood when Victor returns. All the books open and spread around him on the floor—save the map, which is folded neatly and resting on the table. Not much to translate there, which seems to be Adam's current fixation. He traces over the words with his long, elegant fingers, then turns to consult the dictionaries, laid side by side, to widen his understanding.

Alas all of the poetry was set at highway robbery prices, but Adam seems happy enough with his English translation of the Bible.

There's poetry in there, Victor thinks.

…right, the Song of Solomon or…something. A surprisingly titilating group of verses for an holy book who's priests demanded chastity and restraint from their flock.

Regardless; Adam is happily preoccupied, which is the most Victor could ask for.

It means Victor can see to the rest of his chores without distraction.

First, the letters.

One to the Sweeneys, who live below his flat, with instructions to use a specific allotment of funds to refurnish and/or repair his flat in preparation for his return.

One for the bank, so they will allow the transfer of funds when Mister Sweeney arrives with Victor's request for withdrawal.

And one for Professor Krempe.

The last is the hardest to write, for it requires Victor to humble himself and all but beg for a personal audience with his once mentor. And Victor has been humbled in many ways, this winter—no, make that this last year—but he cannot cite those failures. He must construct a new narrative entirely from many carefully chosen, carefully censored facts. A tale of woe and divine retribution, and Victor, his prodigal son, limping home to lay himself at Krempe's feet, to beg for forgiveness and understanding.

Victor will not return to butchering animals—it was excusable as a young man barely old enough to enroll, but after all this, after all he's accomplished and all that he's lost, his tattered pride just could not tolerate it.

He will get his license back. He will be a surgeon, again.

…eventually.

Now, he must hand these letters off to the hotel, and find a vendor willing to be their ride out of Vaduz. And if there is light left in the sky and he hasn't completely exhausted himself, he has clothes to tailor.

…it's nice to have work to fall into, again. He really has missed it. He is never at his best when idle—more irritable, more prone to make impulsive decisions when he is lacking purpose and direction. Victor will never be a popular or well liked man, but he believes that all benefit when his hands are occupied.

He's more likely to keep to himself, that way.

Everyone benefits from him keeping to his damn self.

Chapter Text

Adam bullies him into bed some time approaching 1 am.

They're scheduled to leave with a candle and soap vendor at 5 am, and considering how valuable new clothes will be for them both, Victor had intended to work through the night and sleep while in transit.

Now, the clothes he had bought for himself needed no extensive alterations—save taking the trousers in a few worrying centimeters. To be clear; 'worrying' is not the same as 'surprising'. Victor shedding an unhealthy amount of weight over the last month was a given. He'd dropped the stone or so he'd gained while wallowing in his recovery at the manor, and then another half stone past that, by his estimations. Possibly still within what he considers his 'natural' weight, if beginning to push the low end.

But taking in a pair of trousers was a twenty minute job on a bad day. Adjusting his purchases to fit Adam's measurements was, and was always going to take the bulk of his night.

That, Victor had finished by 10 pm. Then he'd had a very late (very cold) dinner, shaved (finally!) and intended to use the rest of the night to brush all the filth out of the fur of his coat, followed by Adam's collection of pelts, as time allowed.

Victor had been concerned he'd lack the stamina to complete a fifth of his agenda, and was quite pleased to find his body willing to commit as dutifully as his mind.

And he would have finished it all, if Adam hadn't suddenly and without warning snuffed all his candles out and threatened to carry him bodily from his work if Victor did not agree to go bed that instant. The man would not listen to reason and was willing to be a brute to get his way, so with great reluctance, Victor retired with him to bed.

Where he barely got any sleep, so that had been four hours utterly wasted.

By the cock's crow that morning, they had already packed, using the clothes Adam refused to leave behind as improvised luggage, stripped the bedding for the waitstaff (at Adam's insistence), returned their room key, and were making the beginnings of awkward small talk with the vendor amicable to act as their transport out of Liechtenstein.

Adam, of course, asked about the horses. He was introduced to each, to the amusement of their benefactor, and, after Adam had awarded each animal with a gentle stroking along their neck, the man who had introduced himself to Victor as 'Diederik' was insisting Adam call him 'Dirk', for that is what he is called by his friends.

And despite his abnormalities, Adam has a gift for making fast friends.

Admittedly—and Victor has no intention to make mention of this to Adam until he'd made more progress in his socialization and can begin to utilize this to his advantage—people are more inclined toward pity once they begin interacting with Adam in earnest. His speech and mannerisms often remind them of the more managable simple-minded, and his countenance speaks to trauma that may have reduced an otherwise healthy, forward thinking young man to a…more innocent and peaceful state of mind.

The combination is disarming, and Adam's fixation on certain topics—animals and family—quickly eases those who might otherwise consider his height and bulk threatening toward the conclusion they are, instead, speaking to a gentle soul.

They are not wrong…but they also have not been thrown bodily across the room by him after he's roared in their face.

Which is a good thing! It is a very good thing they only see a fraction of Adam's multitudes.

All this is to say, the three of them; Victor, Adam, and Dirk, have found themselves having a very fine morning, before the sun has even passed above the eastern mountains.

Then, not ten minutes or so outside of Vaduz, Dirk abruptly stops waxing poetic about his sweet lady wife and their newly Christened child—Victor knew it was too early for Easter; it had been a Christening that had kept the parishioners in the chapel past noon the Sunday he and Adam had arrived—and just as abruptly pulls his horses to a stop.

"The hell is wrong with—" Dirk starts—to whom, Victor cannot see from his position, a problem he immediately seeks to rectify—then changes tact with a worrying; "get that thing outta my face, Peter."

Victor is attempting to crane his neck past the cargo to see who is accosting their driver when Adam's hand takes his forearm and pulls him back around to face the foot of the cart.

Another man has appeared out of the morning mist. With a rifle. A rifle leveled at he and Adam.

And it is not the man that was selling wolf pelts in the market, but, caught among the gray peppering his hair and beard, there is still the orange of sunset, so Victor is comfortable in speculating that they are being held at gunpoint by the man's older brother.

"Get out of the cart," the older brother orders.

"Gentlemen," Victor begins, "there's no need for—"

"Get outta the cart," the man repeats, faster and sharper, and cocks his rifle.

Victor allows Adam to help him down out of the cart.

Dirk and, Victor can only assume, the younger brother bicker as Dirk is instructed to go on his way and leave the men who have already paid him for a ride to be, likely, shot and killed, and Dirk refuses. Because Dirk is a decent man.

Then words are hissed too quietly for Victor to parse, and Dirk falls silent.

"…sure hope you know what you're doing," Dirk says. And then he calls to his horses, and the cart pulls away to continue down the road.

Without them.

Victor heaves a sigh and glowers upward at the heavens.

This…is simply uncalled for.

"This is ridiculous—we've people waiting on us," Victor starts. "People who know we intended to leave town today. All you've—"

"No one's waiting," says the younger brother, behind him. The thing that Dirk did not want in his face appears to be another rifle, which the man shifts to rest on his shoulder in order to reach inside his coat and—

And those are Victor's letters! Wonderful. Wonderful! This day could not get any better.

"Well," Victor says, voice tipped low and meant only for Adam, "I need those back."

"I'll give'm to you," the younger brother—Dirk called him Peter—says, lifting the letters for emphasis, "you just gotta walk away."

"…I would only do that if I thought this might end badly for—"

"Go, Victor," Adam orders, under his breath. Before Victor can protest—and he intends to, he's opened his mouth to do just that—Adam turns to level him with a look that Victor has only seen once before.

And for a moment, Victor is back in that nightmare of a wedding night, with his creation's hands fisted in his lapels and murderous fury written across every sharp and patchwork line of his face.

And then the moment breaks, for Adam's eyes turn pleading and he mouths, "please."

…God damn it all.

"Gentlemen," Victor says, turning a tight smile on either brother, ending on the younger still in possession of his postage, "enjoy your funeral."

He steps forward, expecting to be handed the stolen letters, and instead Peter levels his rifle again and presses the muzzle to Victor's sternum. "What do you know about this freak?" Peter asks, all teeth and anger.

"He wanted to leave, same as me," Victor lies.

"No, you know something," Peter presses. "Arrived here, together. Roomed together."

"It cares about you," the older brother adds, behind him. "Means we could about make things even, Pete."

"That's my thought," Peter agrees.

Well, then. This may make things worse, but what else does he have?

"I am Baron Victor Frankenstein," Victor says, as steadily as he can manage with a rifle muzzle set to his chest, "and on my hand here, under this glove, is my family ring, as proof." Slowly, as he continues to speak, he pulls the glove off and turns the sterling silver crest to face Peter, and then his brother, behind him. "The Swiss authorities are already investigating my disappearance. If you let me go, none of that will become your problem."

The brothers exchange looks.

"I'm not above bribery," Victor adds. "Check my left coat pocket; you'll find two pounds of silver. Take it, in exchange for my letters and my life."

A beat of silence, and then Peter's brother lifts his chin, and Peter slowly shifts his rifle away and begins to reach for the inside left pocket of Victor's coat.

Behind him, he hears Adam's breathing stop, which leads him to wonder if Adam already knows what Victor plans to do.

Because Victor does believe Adam can handle these two, assuming Victor is removed from the equation.

Unfortunately for Adam, Victor is now very upset, and he is fairly confident he can, personally, make that Peter's problem.

You see, it is remarkably easy to dislocate someone's thumb, once you know how. The proximal phalanx can just be yanked right out of alignment with the metacarpal, and, because people primarily use their hands to touch and grab and feel, there are a lot of nerves therein. Very sensitive nerves. Nerves that become very upset when things are suddenly and violently jerked out of place.

And it doesn't take much strength at all to crush most—if not all—the cartilage in the human nose. One must simply keep their palm flat, fingers pointed toward the sky, and aim for the nose with heel of the hand. This position aligns the seven bones comprising the human wrist with the two bones in the forearm, creating a very strong, stable configuration that is ideal for breaking things through blunt force alone, with minimal damage to the person applying said force. And you really don't need much force—a decent shove will be enough to do damage, if one aims it correctly.

Victor is, admittedly, a little rusty, but his aim is fairly sound, and now Peter is crying and doubled over in pain, and Victor has his rifle and the stolen mail, back.

And, really, it's his own fault for giving Victor the time to decide on all that, what with all the talking and the posturing and the threats to 'get even'.

At roughly the same time, Adam lets loose a proper snarl, and the older brother swears, and there is a clattering of wood and metal changing hands. A glance backward confirms that said brother has been relieved of his rifle as well.

"Give it to me," Adam orders, and Victor sees no reason to object.

He wasn't expecting Adam to launch both rifles far into the fields like a pair of javelins, but…it certainly solves the problem.

Victor really did hope that would be the end of things, but Peter removes a knife from his boot and lunges forward with every intention of getting Victor in the abdomen. Adam is, thankfully, faster.

Why he decided to intercept it with his palm, Victor doesn't—

Oh.

Oh, that's why.

Goodness, and that was Peter's uninjured hand, too.

When the knife came out, Victor immediately retreated to the side of the road as fast as his hobble could take him. It puts him out of reach of either brother, and, perhaps more importantly, out of Adam's way.

"I tried to warn you," Victor says, as the older of the two tries to get between Adam and his sibling. Adam allows this, releasing Peter's now crushed hand and taking a single step back. Then, Adam removes the knife, which had been been buried to the hilt, blade sticking out the back, from his hand, and lobs the weapon it in the direction of the men's rifles.

All this action, and now the brothers stand facing the road back to Vaduz, unable to retreat, for between them and safety is a very angry immortal.

And Adam is growling, the noise ramping with every labored exhale. Victor knows not what to compare the sound of it to. An ox? A lion? A large animal of some kind, for every furious note hits deep—deeper even than Adam's typical speaking register.

It's been quite some time since Victor has seen him be so bestial and…it is very much a different experience, standing on the outside looking in.

And yet, it doesn't seem wrong. It is just another piece of Adam, brought forward and out of the shadows. Caught in a sudden flash of lightning. Rolling out of him with every strike of thunder.

He is a storm cloud given human form.

And when the older brother curses him and asks him what the hell he is, Victor is not expecting the answer to so closely mirror his own line of thought.

"I…" Adam says, drawing the single syllable out, allowing that eerie two-tone of the growl layered under his speech to hang a moment in the air, "am the Spirit of the Forest."

Where that comes from, Victor hasn't the slightest idea, but the brothers react to it immediately. Some local pagan legend, perhaps? What happened to not being a demigod, hmm?

"Piss off," the older brother hisses, fear causing the vulgarity to leave him quietly and brittle.

"I brought you firewood," Adam replies, his diction sharp, turning each consonant into its own clap of thunder. "I fixed your sheep pen. I kept your father company through the winter—."

The brothers each protest, the refutations overlapping such as to make them unintelligible.

"He was my friend,"Adam snarls.

He takes a step forward; the older brother pushes the younger back and stands between them, shielding Peter with his own body.

"He taught me to read, to speak. He showed me mercy and shared freely his wisdom."

Adam advances another step. The brothers tremble, but the elder raises his chin high and holds himself straight, seeming to accept whatever is to come with what Victor must assume is his antiquated sense of honor. And still the man flinches, when Adam takes the final step he needs to entirely erase the distance between them.

Now they stand, two mortal men and wrathful god, a few centimeters short of toe to toe.

A comparison comes to mind, and in that instant, Victor shamelessly abandons all his faintly Grecian comparisons to Gods and their offspring.

These men have made an enemy of a righteous Angel.

"I adored him," Adam continues. "With all my heart." And then, suddenly, his eyes snap to the younger of the pair, and he tilts his head, and asks, "Why did the wolves return to the cabin, and why were you right behind? Peter?"

Peter shrinks another inch, cowering, there, behind his brother, whom Adam turns to next;

"Why did the wolves return to the cabin, and why were you right behind? Daniel?"

The so-named Daniel shakes his head slowly, refusing the blame Adam is leveling onto him and his kin.

"You were hunting them," and very slowly, Adam begins to lift his hands, each finger curled towards the brothers; a pair of talons. "You…thoughtlessly herded them home."

Daniel nearly steps on his brother's ankle in his sudden haste to add more distance. A retreat now is simply unacceptable, so Victor moves to bar them from straying further toward the German boarder. He does not come close enough to touch, for he does not need to. It is a mirror of the brother's tactic, when this ill-conceived little ambush began.

They are the ones pinned, here, now.

And only the Angel can decide when they're free to leave.

"You don' know what you're talking about," Daniel stammers, and it is a valiant attempt to reignite his courage, now that he's been denied his escape.

It is also very much the wrong thing to say.

"I found them upon him!" Adam roars, and oh, in the open air, that sound carries. "And I held him as he died!"

Adam's hands are still raised and twisted into claws, but while he holds them at the level of Daniel's throat, he does not touch the man.

"Say it," Adam orders, voice quieter, and yet still, somehow, so very vast. "Say that his blood is on your hands."

"My brother's blood is on yours," Daniel spits.

"Do you wish to join him?!" is the Angel's reply. "Do you even understand the gift it is, that you are allowed to follow him with such ease?"

Adam doesn't allow them time to answer. Without warning and without obvious cause, he suddenly steps aside and points back towards town.

"Go. Before I change my mind."

The siblings do not question their good fortune, nor do they waste it with some useless, doomed act of valor. They run.

And the more they fade into the still hanging mist of early morning, the more Adam begins to curl in on himself. He's lowered his head nearly to Victor's height, when Victor finally unsticks his stupid feet from the ground and stumbles forward to take his creation's cheeks in each hand, guiding Adam's face to rest against his shoulder as the dam collapses and the poor angel lets out one broken, heart wrenching sob.

There is no point in continuing in this state, so Victor guides Adam to sit at the side of the road, and holds him, as Adam hugs himself and weeps bitter, furious, grief stricken tears.

That is how Dirk finds them, when his conscience forces him to double back nearly an hour, allegiance to the brothers be damned. He asks no questions, just says he's here to honor his word, if they are still in need of transport.

And with his aid, they finally, genuinely, leave the modest market town of Vaduz behind.

Chapter Text

Four days. They are stuck in Friedrichshafen for four days, because Adam refuses to go near the train station.

Because Adam is terrified of trains.

Victor has never liked trains. He could appreciate them as wrought iron testaments to man's ingenuity, as perhaps the most powerful machine yet devised by mortal hands, and as the solid backbone upon which future commerce would be built and ultimately depend.

But they stank, and they were loud, and they practically held you prisoner until you reached your destination, so while he had little love for horses, either, he'd always preferred a carriage to train travel.

To Adam, trains are monsters.

Adam refuses to elaborate on this, but then again, he has spoken little since the altercation with the blind man's sons. That…'discussion' had wounded him quite deeply and despite Victor's best efforts, he simply has not recovered.

They were traveling by merchant cart when Adam saw his first train. Victor still has the bruises from how tightly Adam gripped him as he dragged them both backward as far as the half-filled cart could allow. Victor tried to reassure him, of course, but every word was drowned out by the churning wheels and belching smoke.

The fear left Adam nearly catatonic, eyes either fixed nigh unblinking to some invisible point before him, or held tightly shut. He just lay there, trembling, for the rest of the afternoon.

What else was there to do but hold him?

And that was nowhere near enough.

Since then, he has not let Victor out of his reach, even if their usual configuration has reversed itself somewhat since that Tuesday morning. Sometimes he still pulls Victor down into his lap and holds him from behind, but more and more, he lies on the floor, wraps his long arms around Victor's waist and rests his head on his maker's lap.

It was how they spent much of their journey north; Adam curled over on his side, cheek resting on Victor's thigh, and Victor slowly, carefully petting through that long, auburn hair.

For Victor did not know what to say. Victor does not know how to comfort another person, or console them, or, God forbid, raise their spirits.

But this; this one gesture, this shared joy, he could give.

And once he began, it simply…did not stop.

So a new routine was added to their strange little version of 'normal'.

But it, too, was not enough.

Victor felt useless in the face of this new development, this new phobia, compounded by the wound of loss and blame. It wasn't just that they would be best served by utilizing such a quick and well structured mode of travel. It was how Adam was terrified by a fixture of modern life. New train lines were being constructed in every center of civilization across the world. This was not something he could avoid! Not without abandoning all notions of living comfortably.

Victor had tried explaining the working of trains, hoping Adam's mind would find their construction tantalizing in the way it had the workings of most everything else. When that venture was not fruitful, he instead explained the necessity of using trains for travel. Then he shifted to pleading. Then he resorted to threatening.

Victor thought he might be getting somewhere with the threats, as it finally, finally got Adam to look at him in the face again, but the hope was short-lived, for he had scarcely implied the possibility of leaving without Adam before the man dissolved into a new fit of tears.

Victor tried to take it back. Immediately. Swearing he had never intended to, that it was all little more than noise and bluster, and all of it to ensure Adam was indeed there to travel with him, but it did not bring an end to Adam's tears, and so the subject was dropped for the rest of that night and avoided entirely the day after.

It was horrible, watching Adam cry. Or feeling it, as Adam clung to his waist or arm and hid his face in some piece of Victor's clothing. It was worse being the reason he cried. Of course, there was a time when Victor could not be forced to care, when he loathed his creation and thrust upon him all the blame Victor could not bear to shoulder himself. That already felt like a lifetime ago. Now…

Now, it simply hurt. There was no other word for it. It hurt, watching the man express his own inner pain.

And even if Victor did not blunder his way into inspiring yet another round of tears, they could not be avoided. Every night, Adam would weep, for one reason or another. It was not always fear or grief or sorrow—more than once, Victor lifted his face or brushed his hair away to reveal Adam's countenance strained with fury and hatred.

More than once, Victor wondered if that hate was turned inward, especially after Adam mumbled something into Victor's shoulder about feeling sick of himself, being tired and just wanting the tears to stop.

It was the only conversation they had had that day—and it came in so late, long after sunset—and for once, Victor almost felt confident in his reply.

"I know," he had said. "You know that I know."

For had he not been the one, not so very long ago, who cried and cried and felt he may never stop?

Had Adam not been the one to hold him through that pain? Even though Victor showed him no kindness, no concern?

What could he do but try and return that grace? What else could he possibly do?

"And believe me;" Victor continued, "if I knew a way to rid us of the wretched impulse, it would already be done. There isn't. There is no surgery for this, no medicine. Only the body's instincts to expel what harms it. To purge toxins and foreign objects. It just takes time. It will just take time."

And then, when he felt his voice would not betray the why, he added; "I will wait. I'll wait here with you, until you're well, again. As a companion should."

That had been last night. And he had meant it, truly, he had…but damn it all, he was still going to keep looking for an alternate solution! There was no reason Adam couldn't continue to cry while in transit.

And if it wasn't going to be by train, then fine! Far from ideal, but fine. Their funds were limited, yes, were unquestionably finite, but with the rest of the silver sold, they had enough to locate and procure alternate means of travel.

Adam loved horses, after all. They could just keep finding merchants to bribe until they reached the coast and—

—oh Lord, what if Adam was afraid of boats too?

No, no, no—there was a solution. There was! Victor just needed to find it.

And then he did. He found it that fifth morning, in the advertisements included in one of the newspapers he'd requested be sent up with their breakfast.

Answer in hand, Victor does not hesitate; he throws the paper onto the table, pins it with his index finger set just above the ad's header, and orders Adam to read the section indicated in full.

And then, before Adam can question 'why', Victor gives his pitch;

"I will buy you one, if you will try to board the train."

Initially, Adam is furious.

Has to get up and pace and make frustrated noises and shoot Victor angry glances, and then pace some more.

"Just consider it," Victor prompts.

Adam glowers at him, mutters what sounds suspiciously like 'piss off' under his breath, and then retreats to the window to sulk.

Which is an improvement, actually, so Victor returns to his paper feeling quite proud of himself.

You see, trains were terrifying. Evil and wrong and Adam probably wished they would all just stop existing this very instant, but other people were once again quite frightening for Victor's creation, too. And who would blame the man?

(Victor, previously, but that was full month ago.

…actually that is distressingly little time for him to. To make such an about-face where his creation is concerned.

In his defense, a lot can happen to a man in the span of a month.

A lot can change.)

Point being, Adam had been avoiding the windows and really any situation that may lead him to seeing or being seen by anyone else, Victor, of course, excluded.

That he's retreated from Victor not to curl up on their bed, but to stare out at the street beyond their hotel room is actually quite encouraging.

After lunch, and after Adam has had a good sulk over Victor's attempt to bribe him into facing his fears, and has mellowed, and returned to slowly filling the journal that has occupied the bulk of his time since its purchase their first day in Germany, Victor pulls on his gloves and announces; "I'm going to speak with the person who placed the advertisement."

And then he looks to Adam, who is already glaring at him, because Victor is not even attempting subtly, now.

"You are welcome to join me," Victor adds.

Adam is unimpressed. Adam knows this is a bribe. Victor knows that Adam knows that this is a bribe, and they both know if Adam comes with him, the bribe will work.

For, really, who wouldn't take on something difficult and frightening, if they were rewarded for their efforts with a puppy?

(Victor. Victor wouldn't. Because animals smell and cause messes and destroy things and make noise and have to be trained thoroughly before they're even remotely tolerable, and it still will not stop them from randomly deciding a piece of your clothing is their newest toy and your attempts to retrieve your belongings the best game they have ever played, necessitating it must be prolonged indefinitely.

To this day he cannot stand his aunt's stupid, pampered little hellhound.)

And, really, Adam should not be surprised Victor would stoop to this. Victor will use anything and everything at his disposal to get his way, and that will inevitably include using things that Adam loves against him.

Victor waits, needlessly adjusting his gloves, as if it is not obvious he is waiting for Adam to agree, or refute, or even order Victor to stay, for it would be within his rights, as Victor's captor.

Instead, Adam drops his eyes from his creator and murmurs;

"You said yyyou would—would wait."

"…I did," Victor replies. "On the assumption we could not come to some alternate solution."

Adam's frown deepens, and he draws in a slow breath, before saying; "I dddo not want to, Victor. They. Remind mmme of—o-of the fire."

…ah.

…that is…most unfortunate.

"…you…are not the same man you were at the time of the fire," Victor offers. "…you certainly didn't have a little dog."

"It is—it is not fair to—t-to—to—"

"Give you something you want in exchange for doing something you do not? I believe that is about as fair as it gets."

In the end, after a bit more glowering and mumbling, Adam does join Victor on his outing to locate the dog breeder. Victor is fairly certain it is more his aversion to being alone than the possibility of seeing a small cohort of tiny little baby dogs that urges Adam forth, but the important thing is that he is trying.

Again, he could have just held Victor hostage if he truly could not bring himself to try.

And yes, of course they leave their appointment with one of the tiny little baby dogs in Adam's possession.

For that was exactly Victor's plan!

The dog is impossibly small, the runt of the litter, because of course Adam would be compelled to dote on the most pathetic animal on offer. Smaller still, because its mother is a purebred dachshund. Its father was assumed to be one as well, but to the breeder's misfortune, and he and Adam's benefit, it seems the mother had an illicit romance with some unknown mutt, who's poor breeding poisoned what would have otherwise been a very profitable litter.

And so an ad was placed; discounted dachshund with off-coloring and, in the case of Adam's beloved runt, a coat too long for its intended purpose as pure bred badger hunters.

And it is still ridiculously expensive, but! But. Still an investment Victor is happy to make if it means they will be leaving Friedrichshafen the following morning.

"It suits you," Victor says, on the walk back to the hotel.

Adam, who has tucked the puppy into his coat and refuses to hold it lower than his cheek, gives Victor a sidelong glance.

"Mary is a 'she', not an 'it'."

"Of course," Victor says.

It is agreed that Mary is to be Adam's responsibility. Victor wants no part in raising her, and expects her to be trained and carefully watched and prevented from causing mischief. Although, she is an awkward little thing, so he suspects she will be more prone to accidents than intentional disobedience, at least while she is an adolescent. The majority of the time, she is coddled and cuddled and held close by her new master, but on the few occasions that she is allowed to freely roam that first night, she seems predestined to trip over herself. Of course, she's of such an awkward shape, perhaps all of her breed suffer with coordination issues in their youth.

Adam adores her, though, and cannot seem to stop smiling.

He introduces her to his small but growing collection of books. His pencil and journal. The window, the bed, the little water closet. He plays with her, using the ratty black scarf his friend had gifted him and he refuses to part with. She does not seem to possess the hunting prowess most associated with her breed, but she gives her battle with the scarf a valiant try.

Her bark leaves much to be desired. Sharp, high pitched—it is a good thing she is contented into silence while cradled in Adam's hands, for Victor would fear for his own sanity if she proved herself prone to constant exclamations. There are a few whines here and there, also quite the irritant, but she is also easily pleased, and Adam is of course dutiful in his care of her.

She is fed scraps from Adam's plate at dinner from the comfort of his lap. Once full, they both retire to the bed to continue their cuddling.

Victor busies himself with other matters, for there is still much to see to when they return to Edinbrugh, most crucially the Swiss authorities and the aftermath of the wedding night. While he has no intention of contacting them himself, he is not under any illusions he can avoid the inquest indefinitely. One day, the mess must be seen to, and when that day comes, he must be prepared.

And when it's all over, they'll sell the manor and never have to think of that night again.

Ruminating on this proves to be a very useful distraction, but it also places Victor in quite a sour mood. So much so that when he is ordered to retire for the evening, he finds himself at odds with little Mary. It is her first opportunity to be so close to Victor, and she is curious and eager for more affection. Victor, however, wants nothing to do with her. He does not want his face licked, he does not want her paws scratching up his chest, he does not want her nibbling on his fingers.

Unfortunately, their usual position cuts Adam off from her and places Victor entirely within her reach. And she is a stupid baby dog and does not understand any commands and does not care how many times Victor picks her up and sets her away, no matter how gently.

A solution must be found. One that leaves Adam's arms free to corral the little animal.

So, for the first time, Victor is the one huddled against Adam's back, Victor's cheek on Adam's shoulder, and Victor's arm hugging Adam's waist. It is a bit silly—the hostage doing the caging? Really?—but it is not so uncomfortable that Victor cannot find his way to sleep.

He does have to rearrange Adam's hair a bit so he doesn't keep inhaling it, but that is seen to almost immediately.

From this position, blocked from view by Adam's wide shoulders, Victor can only guess at how Mary situates herself, and how much influence Adam exerts regarding her placement. He can feel Adam laugh at something or other—he laughs quietly, more breath than sound, like he used to cry—and murmur sweet nonsense to the puppy.

And even when his breathing begins to hitch, his laughter is soon behind. Victor suspects Mary's solution to tears is to lick them away, and for reasons Victor doubts he will ever understand, Adam finds her tongue on his face endearing. It still takes a quarter hour for Adam to settle again, but he does so with a pleased sigh.

To the best of Victor's knowledge, that is the only crying fit Adam is forced to endure that night.

In spite of the drawbacks, and his own poor disposition towards such creatures, Victor is quite proud of his investment. Miss Mary is already proving her worth.

Lord God, may she perform just as well tomorrow.