Chapter Text
Victor is certain he is dead. He has never been more certain of anything in his life. The world is fading away, all gray and hazy. He can no longer feel his body except for the spot where the Creature's hands rested on his chest.
It is an unimaginable relief, to be forgiven.
And it is a relief that nothing has to come after forgiveness.
Everything feels numb and distant, fading away to darkness. There is a faint golden glow, like dawn was coming, like the light in the Creature’s eye, and then even it dwindles and there is nothing.
He is sure he is dead, and then, rather suddenly, he is not.
He is burning.
Like the tower, like the angel. He is aware of his body all at once, and everything is agonizing. He knows he is awake, for how could he feel pain like this if he were anything but? Or maybe he is not awake at all, and he is in Hell. Yes, yes, that makes more sense. He is dead after all, and this is his eternal punishment.
Except…except he can hear voices. Concerned voices, all around him. There is a hand on his brow, and something cold. He can see distant lights and shapes, all watery and muddled. Somebody is screaming.
Maybe he is.
“Victor-” A deep, resonant voice is calling his name. The angel? Or is he the angel, burning away to the bone? Everything slips away again, and he is less certain of his death.
---
When he rises again from the depths of unconsciousness, Victor is sure he is alive. The waking feels violent, like he is being torn from some dark, comfortable, safe place. There is a flash of disappointment at the loss of oblivion, but it fades quickly, drowned out by more dire concerns. He cannot concentrate on anything, every bit of his body seems to be clamoring for attention.
Panic clings to every corner of his mind. He is gasping, wheezing for breath. His lungs burn, the blunt end of his leg throbs, his fingers prickle like he rubbed them with shards of glass. He tries to catalog the sensations, to diagnose what is wrong with him, but his mind is clouded with pain, and one thought won’t follow the other. Everything is hot and heavy and achy.
One shape in his vision gradually becomes more apparent. There is a face above him. He should recognize the man, but the name won’t come. He is…the Captain? Of the ship? Yes, yes that is something he can recall at least.
The Captain is saying something to him. There is another figure, moving too quickly for his liking. He cannot focus on the man. A doctor? There is a doctor here? Who is ill? Will they need a surgeon? Will he-
A flash of agony cuts that thought short as he draws in a deep breath. It deteriorates to coughing, and he is paralyzed with pain, stars dancing in his vision.
He is ill. He is at this doctor’s mercy. He has been here before, with his arm-it is injured. He can feel the pain from his clavicle all the way through his fingers, burning in some places and tingling to numbness in others. They will take his hand? He cannot bear that idea. He cannot let them.
He tries to say this, to make his protest known, and even to his own ears the words come out a garbled groan. Somebody is touching his brow. Somebody is pushing him down to lay back. They are very strong.
He is left panting, nearly senseless, his eyes trying to follow the doctor. Everything is blurry, and it is difficult to focus- even on the shape of the captain standing motionless over him. Is he speaking? Is he speaking to Victor?
There is another figure, further away that he can not make out. Everything is too bright and too fast and too much. He wants everything to stop. He longs for darkness and quiet that won’t come. He can’t even ask for it.
Suddenly, there are hands on his chest, changing the bandage on his shoulder. His shoulder? When had- he is abruptly reminded of a knife in his flesh, and ice. And fire. An explosion, a dark angel.
Every small movement brings wracking waves of pain. The dressings on his shoulder seem to take an age to re-bandage, and when that is done he is not even awarded the courtesy of oblivion. His hand came next, and he does not even have the energy to recall what has happened to it. It goes on and on and on, until he is weak and limp and gasping.
Somebody tries speaking to him, and he hears it only as a jumbled mess. He is offered water, then food, and resisted. He had no stomach for such things.
There is conversation nearby. Are they talking about him? What are they saying? Who is there? The Creature? Had that night all been a dream? Perhaps he is still out on the ice-
The lights make his head ache. Everything hurts. He does not want to be awake. He still feels like he is burning, heat rolling off him in waves. Desperate for a reprieve, he tears at the furs and blankets covering him, shoving them weakly away. Strong hands stop him, and he has to lay there, hurting and untethered and exhausted and angry and it is all so unfair-
“He will live, I am confident of it.” It is the first phrase he is able to make sense of since he has woken, and he is finally drifting away again. As Victor is dragged back down to sleep, he is struck briefly by the miraculous nature of his recovery. Perhaps this is meant to be his eternal punishment, after all.
Hazy darkness rears up, and takes him once again.
---
Time rolls along. Dreams, darkness. Victor wakes again, and not much is different. It is impossible to tell if hours have passed, or days. He is nearly as painful and miserable as before, and the cabin around him looks exactly the same in his indistinct vision.
His chest is the worst: aching as if it had been crushed by an enormous weight. Every small movement has him wincing at the tenderness, sucking in small, shallow breaths. He cannot bring himself to look at his shattered hand. His overgrown hair and beard were itchy with dried sweat. Somebody had combed his hair- what else had they done to him in his insensible state? The vulnerability of it all makes him feel hollow.
He lifts his right arm to clear his eyes and is abruptly reminded of the extent and recency of his injuries. He gasps aloud at the sudden, violent flash of pain and drops his arm just as quickly.
There is a small, soft noise of surprise, and in his blurry gaze a nearby figure shifts.
Struggling to sit a little more upright, Victor quickly scrubs at his eyes with his left fist.
As his vision falls into focus, he finds a familiar face not far from his own.
Dark, cow-like eyes. Long, tangled hair. Pale, patchwork skin.
The Creature.
So it is still on the ship. And it cannot die, so he is undoubtedly still alive. Perhaps, he thinks with a flash of dread, he will heal and life will go on. He cannot possibly picture what that will look like. Will the Creature follow him, trailing after him as a constant reminder of his terrible mistakes?
He bites the inside of his cheek, hard. He has been forgiven, he reminds himself. He has to- he doesn’t know what he is to do now, only that he must be different now.
The Creature has not moved nor spoken a single word since Victor has woken. He is standing there, staring at him, and Victor can only think of that first day in the tower. It makes him feel sick.
“You’re still here.” He says rather stupidly. He cannot conjure up the energy or will to say anything more intelligent, and even those three words hurt, dragging themselves from his chest like a cart caught in mud.
At the abrupt sound of Victor’s raspy voice, the Creature starts violently, jerking upward so quickly he nearly cracks his head on the low beams. He shakes himself, seems to recover, then turns his gaze back towards Victor.
“Where else am I to go?”
That voice, deep, with a touch of an inhuman growl curling beneath it. The words falling from his mouth slowly, deliberately. He sounds…tired? Sad? Utterly resigned to his terrible fate? It is not a promising start to forgiveness, Victor decides. He does not know how to respond to the Creature, so he says nothing at all.
It is…he does not know how to feel about his presence. Part of Victor is pleased that he had not departed. His memory of their previous conversation is still hazy at best, but there is surely more for them to discuss.
But, as the Creature had said, he had nowhere else to go. It all seemed to be a matter of convenience, and here Victor was, trapped in the midst of it.
The Creature bends and sits heavily on the floor and returns to whatever he had been doing - reading, it seemed - and Victor sinks back into his own dark thoughts.
How long has it been since that fateful night? Days? Weeks? He could feel the rocking of the ship, jostling his wounds, so the ship was no longer locked in ice. Where were they going?
He almost asks the Creature in an attempt to strike up a conversation, but falls short. That idea feels unbearably wrong and awkward. The idea of the two of them just…having such a mundane conversation feels so foreign he can hardly imagine it. It is strange enough that he is there, sitting on the floor beside Victor, a mere arms-reach away, and neither one of them are furiously trying to kill each other. It feels wrong.
He has been forgiven, he tries to remind himself, but even that idea is not the least bit comforting. The Creature killed six sailors and injured many more. He killed Victor’s own brother-
….but Victor, too, is a murderer. Even the mere idea has him a terrible cold creeping over his flesh. He does not want to think about her, not now- he wants to be senseless again, lost in that dark oblivion of illness. Anything would be better than Elizabeth’s memory, anything at all, the agony of a knife in his shoulder- except, that was not the first time he has killed at all. He has Harlander’s blood on his hands as well - is that, too, his fault? Or can he blame it on the man's madness?
He cannot make sense of what is happening. It still feels like that whole night, the whole conversation, holding his Creature's hand and hearing it forgive him had been a dream. Maybe he was dead, and this was…purgatory? Hell?
No. He thought. It was real. He was not to be so lucky.
Question after question rose in his mind, each more terrible than the last. What were they? What now? Who were they to each other?
Despite what he had said in that brief, terrible moment of clarity after the Creature had told its tale, he was not the Creature’s father, and the Creature was not his son. It felt wrong, like they were only pretending, and the thing between them was something else entirely. He did not know how to be a father, had no desire. What, then, did the Creature want from him? He barely knew the man. He had already expressed a desire for a companion, which of course Victor could not provide. If not a wife, a family….then what? Friends? How could they possibly be that, after everything that had happened? Lovers, then? The mere idea of it was so ludicrous he almost laughed aloud.
The cabin door opens abruptly, startling him but failing to interrupt that awful line of thought. The sound feels so distant, he is barely aware of somebody having entered the room. He can feel his heart pounding, his breath coming in short little gasps that hurt, burning like an angry fire in his chest.
The Creature is standing above him. When had he started staring down at Victor?
Across the small room, Doctor Udsen is standing in the open doorway. He stares, taking in the scene, then crosses the cabin in a few short steps and grabs Victor’s wrist, feeling for his pulse. His gaze searches Victor’s face, his hands move to his chest. The Creature remains looming behind him, watching the whole thing unfold silently.
“Frankenstein.” The doctor is saying, now grasping one of his hands. “Victor.” He says, with a little more force. “I need you to calm down. Breathe, man. Breathe.”
He cannot breathe. He can only suck in little, hitching breaths that make his whole chest burn. His own breathing is running away from him, his thoughts spiraling out of control. The world is weighing down on him. Everything is in pieces. His creation is lurking above him like the dark angel, the light from the window catching in his tangled hair like a halo, and he cannot think-
“Victor.” The Creature says, glancing between him and the doctor. There is an expression of dawning horror on his face. “What is wrong with him…?” He trails off, wringing his hands uselessly as Victor looks on, his mind whirling, choking on his own breath.
“He is panicking.” The doctor says curtly, then abruptly leaves Victor’s side. “Watch him. I need to get something. I shall return shortly.”
So he is left like that, the Creature wordlessly staring down at him as he pants and shakes and cannot control himself. He wants nothing more than to flee, to run from this room and never stop, but he cannot do that. He can barely even move. He cannot focus or even fully meet the Creature’s gaze, but he can make out looks, for lack of a better word, concerned.
He is imagining things. He is falling to pieces and his eyes are lying to him. That is what is happening.
It is not so easy to explain away the gentle but hesitant touch on his hand. No more of a brush of fingers than anything, but it is there.
He is so shocked by it that for a moment it is like he forgets to panic, and by the time the doctor returns, his breath is still fast and hitching and uneven, but he has some control over it at least.
The Creature’s fingers are cool, his touch is cautious and delicate. Victor feels every touch with shocking clarity. He cannot look at the Creature’s hand or face, and stares into the middle distance, fighting to control his breathing, his thoughts, everything. It is no use.
The Creature retreats slightly when the doctor reappears, stepping back slightly but still looming over Victor. His hand has been withdrawn, and Victor is simultaneously relieved and distressed by its absence. It had been something to focus on, if nothing else.
The doctor makes a concerned noise, examines him briefly again, and offers him more laudanum.
He takes it gratefully, and lets the haze of it gradually wash over him, slowing his mind and his breathing and his heart. It does not take the memory of the Creature’s tentative touch against his hand, and that thought burns into his dreams, as violently as the angel’s fire.
---
Day. Night. Doctor Udsen at his bedside. Captain Anderson speaking to the doctor. Pain, sweat, and blood. Time falls away around him, the ship sails on bearing him to a destination he does not know.
His hand begins to knit itself together, the pain at times so insistent he can hardly bear it. Everything feels like a great exertion, his lungs hardly able to keep up. His shoulder aches, a horrible prickling sensation burying deep into the tissue, but the wound there begins to close.
There is one constant.
The Creature is always in the cabin every time he wakes, often sitting and reading in silence, or pacing and talking to himself under his breath, his open hands twisting back and forth. Victor presumes he, too, is confined to the cabin.
They are not troubled by the rest of the crew, and rarely see anybody save for Captain Anderson or the ship's doctor. So. He is alone, except for the Creature. He wishes he were truly alone.
He wants to cry, a lot of the time. He wants to scream and cry and howl like a wild animal, but the Creature is there. It is always there, so he can’t do that.
He knows he was screaming and crying in the gray haze of his convalescence, but that is what sick people do, sometimes. He is lucid now. He is Baron Victor Frankenstein (Still! After all this time!). He can’t. He just can’t.
So he glares, and seethes, and balls up all his pain and every other awful feeling and tries to act as impassively as he can bear.
Perhaps if they did converse things would be different. They have hardly spoken since that fateful night. Victor, of course, had been in the throes of a terrible fever for days on end, and then once it had broken was still riddled with awful pain and weariness and spent much of his time sleeping.
Now, he finds himself awake and aware and still they do not talk. He sees the Creature watching him sometimes, especially after waking. There is an odd, searching expression on its face, but he does not initiate conversation.
This, Victor can understand. What do they have to talk about that isn’t unbearably painful? What do they have in common at all, despite the fact that Victor had made him?
For that matter, why is the Creature still here? He has not so much as asked anything of Victor since that night. Is he waiting for something?
A small, terrible thought takes hold in his mind - he is waiting to kill Victor. It is utterly ludicrous. Why now? Why would he wait? He had forgiven Victor, after all.
…does forgiveness mean anything?
He had asked the Creature for his forgiveness, and the Creature had responded. If he had not asked, what would have happened? Had the Creature even wanted to forgive him? He certainly didn’t deserve it, and it all felt unreal, still. He should not have even asked. He had not earned even that mercy.
It is an unsettling thought, but he cannot deny the truth in it. It lodges in his heart, and he cannot help but feel that he has done something terrible.
---
On the seventh morning, Victor wakes and finds he does not immediately want to slip back into sleep. The heat in his skin has abated. There is still pain, and his chest feels like it is bound in tight metal bands, but his head feels clear, not muddled and heavy. He does not quite believe it has been an entire week- it feels simultaneously too long and far too short.
The doctor’s prediction of his healing feels more certain than ever: he is now able to remain awake for long enough that boredom begins to take hold. Doctor Udsen offers him paper, and asks if he wants to write to anybody. Victor promptly declines this notion. Who would he possibly write to? And what would he say? It is a painful reminder of his brother’s loss and the fact that he does not have a single other soul to trust. His distant relatives? His old colleagues? All gone, all chased away.
The doctor seems saddened and slightly confused by his refusal, but does not push the matter and then offers a book to read or something else to do instead. This, he accepts for lack of a better thing to do. He is lucid enough to be bored, so he might as well do something.
He quickly finds this to be a more frustrating pastime than he had expected. It is cumbersome to turn the pages with his left hand, as the pain in his right is still too great to manipulate anything. Still. It is a relief to do something, anything other than laying in his own sweat and blood and meticulously analyzing his every personal failing. His mind, at last, is a little more quiet.
It is not long before he realizes that he is not alone: the Creature, too, is reading, sitting in the far corner of the cabin by the Captain’s desk. For once, his presence does not feel frightening or uncomfortable.
It is not quite peaceful, and Victor certainly does not deserve peace now, but it is…nice. Just nice, nothing more. But nice is better than terrifying. Nice is better than wretched and awful.
Like Victor, the Creature does not seem entirely relaxed, but he is calm, and they are both reading, just…existing together.
Pausing to turn a page, he looks up at the Creature. He is perched awkwardly on the chair, one knee bent out to the side, the other upright with his elbow hooked around it, his neck bent forward to hunch over the book in his lap. It is unusual, and hardly looks comfortable, but he is utterly engrossed in whatever he is reading. Victor can see his lips moving wordlessly, one finger tracing the lines on the page. The pitching of the ship makes his long hair sway ever so slightly, and it catches in the light to show its true colors: a deep, reddish brown with that singular pale streak. At rest, the lines of his scars and the pale color of his skin make him appear more statue than man: his long elegant limbs only serve to accentuate the appearance.
He does not know how long he is staring at the Creature, only that eventually the book slips from his lap and onto the floor, startling him.
The Creature does not jump, he calmly looks up, then quietly unfolds from his seated position and crosses the floor. The silence with which he moves does not appear to Victor as unsettling, but rather graceful, and the change in his perception does not escape his notice. Still, he has other things to think about; namely how the Creature bends to retrieve his book. He glances briefly at the cover, nods to himself, then hands it back to Victor before wordlessly retreating to his chair. Before he returns to his own text, Victor takes one last look, and could swear that there is the shadow of a smile on his Creature’s face.