Chapter Text
All that Elizabeth could recall of the final moment of her wedding night was the sensation of sweeping relief.
The preparations had taken weeks, and for weeks she had felt a heavy dread building in her stomach like a pearl. The more joyful congratulations she received, the worse she felt, and on the sight of a parade of bouquets being marched into the main hall of the great estate she was struck with the image of them lushly surrounding a casket that was open and waiting for her. On the day of the ceremony she had excused herself early in the morning, spending hours in her dressing room and waving away lady’s maids that came to braid her hair. Then, just as the sun had barely sunk beneath the low hills of the grounds, she found that her life was once again inexorably changed.
The sound was enormous, a detonation. It sent the crystal on her vanity into a shuddering chorus and its lingering shockwave was the silence of the guests beyond her door. Relief. The feeling was so instinctual she could not process it as abnormal. It had come from Victor’s room. She knew, beyond reason, beyond impossibility, what this meant. At any rate, Victor had an uncanny habit of exceeding impossibilities.
She rose at once, desperate and unafraid, charging into the hall and past the heavy doors of the bedchamber. Debris was still floating through the air, the shards of ruined bedposts mingling with broken glass that sparkled in the firelight. She turned her head towards the odd sound of a low groan in the corner of the room – Victor was lying crumpled in the wreckage. Before she could address him, the sound was answered by another, even stranger: a gust of wind through old pipes, a dying animal, an inhuman wheeze. Before her, crested in sickly blue, was the hulking figure of Him. Frozen, she could not at first identify what she was looking at. Hairy, indistinct, fluttering with dark fabric, the shapes refused to form anything sensible in her eyes. Then, rising in her vision, the moon in the night sky, a pale face emerged into wondrous clarity. The shades of blue, grey, misty violet, sunken yellow, the precise map of puckered gashes, and the heavy-lidded, mournful eyes; the blackened lips, taught and half-parted in a grimace. It was exactly as she remembered, save for the thin locks of dark hair that now surrounded it. He, standing silently, seemed to regard her with the same wonder, his eyes searching, becoming distant for a moment with memory.
“Elizabeth.” The voice gurgled from within him. He said the word slowly and deliberately, his lips pulling back across his pale grey teeth. She stumbled towards him, reaching out an unsure hand, still reeling with disbelief. He smelled of smoke and earth, lichen and decaying wood. She looked up at him and unthinkingly cradled his face in her hands, wanting to confirm the reality of it. His skin had become dreadfully cold in the night air. As she touched him the strain seemed to fade somewhat from his expression, his shoulders relaxing, a smile faintly surfacing and pulling his scars into an odd configuration. His eyes were different now, swimming with uneasy depth; they belonged to another man than the one she had met in the ruins of the aqueduct.
“Get away from it!” The voice from the corner of the room shouted viciously. Elizabeth turned to face him and had only a moment to process the glint of a handgun, its barrel pointed just past her.
“No!” She shrieked, throwing herself before Victor. She would not allow him to take such a precious gift from her, not so soon after it had been returned to her grasp. The fury that swelled within her was overwhelming – a cumulation of all the time spent believing He was dead, destroyed alongside all the arcane secrets piled high in that awful tower, a life with unknowable value crushed in wanton hatred by its own progenitor. She blinked against a gunpowder flash, and at once collapsed at the shock of a searing pain in her side that seemed to tear her in half. Simultaneously, her torso was caught in a crushing grip, and her vision then swung and tilted as she was pinned helplessly to the ruined bed. Commotion continued deafeningly around her, but her senses had become narrow, her focus only on surviving the next second. She felt the hot gushing of blood, and the encroaching darkness of unconsciousness. All at once the cries of anguish, the animal roaring, the sounds of splitting wood and breaking glass had each gone silent, and in the strange quiet she felt long arms surround her, the cold scent of earth bracing her, mingling with coppery fresh blood.
“Take me with you,” she pleaded – if it should be her last request, she longed for nothing else.
Wordlessly he lifted her and carried her from the room. In her final moment of consciousness, passing through the doorway, she met the wild eyes of Victor, whose face was a mask of fury and despair.
–
Elizabeth awoke in the thin light of early morning, birdsong ringing in her ears. She groaned weakly, feeling shooting pain travel up and down her torso, reaching into the tips of her toes. Her eyes focused upon the dancing dust in a shaft of light, and beyond to a timber-lined ceiling that she did not recognize. Taking great effort to turn her head, she examined the window at her side. Beyond the hazy, bubbled glass she could only make out the outlines of large pine trees. A coarse wool blanket covered her and she could feel that beneath it she was still half-dressed; her shoes and stockings were still on. Her crinoline and skirts were missing, as was her bodice. She assumed from the tightness about her torso that her corset was still on. A heavy shawl had been wrapped about her arms, which smelled of hay and cedarwood. She was not feverish but cool, even cold – the room lacked a fireplace. She felt incredibly remote. She could not bring herself to care about where she had been taken, nor how long it had been since she had come here. She basked in the singular, floating feeling of freedom, closing her eyes against the sun, letting herself drift.
When she woke again it was at the sensation of a rag soaked in cold water being pressed to her lips. The quality of the light was different, brighter on her eyelids now. She opened her eyes lazily, and met His, wide and dark, as he looked down at her. His hands were careful, his movements slow. The moment she met his gaze he stopped and seemed to recoil.
“Elizabeth…”
“I am alright now,” she said, to ease herself as much as he.
“You are hurt.”
It was the first complete sentence she had ever heard him speak.
“I am not dead,” she said, as cheerfully as she could manage, then: “How is that possible?”
Averting his eyes, he raised an arm. Just below his elbow, an angry knot of scar tissue was forming. “I took much of the impact.”
She marveled at the arm, at the delicate shell-pink sheen of the scar. “How many days has it been, then?”
“It is only the next day.”
Elizabeth blinked, struggling to comprehend.
“My recovery is one of my creator’s many gifts to me.” He enunciated the word bitterly, looking down at his wound. “It will be gone tomorrow.”
“Does it hurt?” she asked, still attempting to digest yet another miracle of biology that lay before her.
“I felt the bullet shatter bone and tear my tendons apart. Now? No. It does not.”
Her eyes were wide. It seemed she had offended him in some discreet way.
“Then, what happened to me?”
He looked back down at her. “As it came through my arm, I managed to turn your body enough that it only grazed your side. It was a grave injury. Mercifully, it seems none of your internal organs have been harmed.” Taking a finger, he lightly touched Elizabeth’s torso where it lay beneath the blanket. “The belt, with steel in it, also helped,” he added thoughtfully. She realized he was referring to her corset, which he retrieved from beneath the bed. She gasped softly as she examined the ragged hole that had been torn through one side, several of the bones bent out of shape. The brocade was soaked with the dark brown of her coagulated blood. He searched again for another item, and she heard the rustling of heavy skirts as he pulled them out to show to her.
“I had no choice but to use this fabric to dress your wound. I am very sorry.” He gestured to the hem, which had been torn away in a long strip. She laughed, then grimaced as her side responded with a searing flash.
“If I could even recall how many dresses I have ruined…” she wearily smiled up at the ceiling. She cautiously pulled the bedcovers below her waist to examine the damage, raising her head as much as she was able. Yet more blood, a fresher and more shocking crimson, bloomed from her left side. Never in her life had she seen so much of it at once – the sight made her slightly faint. It spread like thick blots of ink through white silk satin of her wedding gown, which was wrapped in neat layers from her hip to her ribs, her chemise pooling out from each end of the tight bandages.
“I will have to change them soon.”
“Am I still bleeding?”
“It is difficult… to tell.” The longer he spoke to her, the less he seemed comfortable doing so. His heavy brow was pinched in concern. She took his hand, the fingers cold, and wrapped it in hers.
“Thank you. My guardian Angel,” she mused, looking up at him earnestly, into the deep-set eyes that animated his face. He softened at her touch, closing his free hand atop hers. Close as it was to her, she was able to study the pale yellow nails that were set in his bruised fingertips.
“I am responsible for this. I should not have come. It was selfishness and nothing more,” His grip tightened.
“However, I feel there is nothing else I could have done. My pain, a cruel shepherd, drove me to him.”
“What did you say to him?”
His face collapsed slightly and he lingered in the silence for a long moment before continuing.
“In the time after he abandoned me, I learned that my burden was not the suffering of living itself, but to suffer alone. Many painful things become tolerable when one is no longer alone.”
Elizabeth turned her face from him. “I am sorry to say that one can suffer terrible loneliness even in the company of others.”
This seemed to give him pause, and he removed his hand from hers, toying with the fabric of the skirts in his lap.
“Did you wish to reunite with him? To live with him as a son?”
“I could hardly expect such a thing from Victor. I do not respect him enough to call him Father.” He continued carefully, “I do not know what I was searching for. Perhaps it is enough that he now bears the full knowledge of my personhood. Does it shock you that he did not so much as acknowledge my fluency in language? For all the agonizing over my intelligence,” he bowed his head in consternation.
“How did you learn German? I thought you were alone.”
“I sheltered in secret in the home of a family. They were teaching their young daughter.” He said quietly. “I can read as well.”
An odd, swelling pride surged in her chest. “That could not have been easy. You speak very well,” she assured him. He simply nodded his head gratefully. She took his hand again, pressing his palm to her warm cheek and closing her eyes.
“Thank you. Thank you,” she whispered.
“You told me to take you with me. I could not deny you. You may have been in better hands with Victor.”
“Victor is the one who shot me. He is a butcher, not a surgeon. I do not want his hands anywhere near me, not in a thousand years.”
His lips pulled back over his teeth and his body shook with an odd sound that Elizabeth realized was his laughter. Stifled, creaking laughter. He smiled brightly down at her, and she felt her chest tighten. He did not remove his hand from her cheek.
“You remembered me,” she said softly.
“Your presence brought back many other memories as well. I thank you for that. When I could recall your visiting me, I could recall what it was like to be in that place. The dark, the cold, the constant sound of flowing water. Even shackled to the ground, everything was wonderful. I felt a certain fondness even for Victor. It was a time when he still looked for the possibilities within me.”
Elizabeth turned her face to hide the tears that were welling in her eyes.
“I remember seeing you for the first time. Permit me grace if I admit I was frightened,” she said, regretfully. “When I looked into your eyes, however, the fear quickly faded away. I saw that you were like a child, in your utter innocence and in your longing, your awe for the world. Your body, though scarred, was a beautifully attuned machine, so carefully assembled; there was no doubt in my mind that a soul resided within it. I felt genuine admiration for Victor’s work, and for this new life that stood before me. And the manner in which you looked at me, so completely open, it stunned me.”
“I remember your face behind beautiful fabric. You were a sylph, a rare creature. I had never seen such color before.”
“I removed my bonnet to see you more clearly. And you took my hand…” Elizabeth rested a hand against his where it lay on her cheek.
“Your gloves, so delicate. I felt I would somehow drive away this beautiful creature that was before me, that I would lose it forever. I was terrified.”
“I knew you deserved a life beyond that prison. If I could only have done more.”
He shook his head, dismissing the path of thought.
“The night you came to visit me alone, against his wishes. Only the light of the candles.”
She flushed slightly at the memory.
“I still have the leaf, you know.”
“Leaf…”
“I will not take any offense if you do not remember.”
“I only remember your face, your voice. Your hair. I could not believe a person could be so beautiful. Even now, I find it hard to tolerate such a difference between us.”
“Some find that a flower’s face is marred when a beetle lands upon it. I prefer the beetle,” Elizabeth shrugged.
“That does little to console me. But I appreciate your sentiment,” he reassured. “For a brief moment, you were my world.”
“Now you are mine.”
He removed his hand from her face, letting it gently graze her neck, her collar. He retracted it as if it nearly burned to touch her.
“Do you not wish to be reunited with your husband?”
“I could not care less where he is.” The words came out venomous; she shocked herself with them. “Is he dead?” she asked then, apprehensive.
“No.”
She rolled her head to face him. “I apologize. I do not know what you have been told about marriage,” she said carefully, “But we will be happy enough together, certainly. I am only in pain and slightly delirious.”
“Delirious? Are you feeling feverish?” He quickly put a hand to her forehead. She swatted it away gently.
“No, no.” Her brow creased. “William will no doubt come for me soon enough. I can continue to recover in his care.”
“I do not believe he will find this place without great effort. I will return you to him if that is what you desire, but you must allow several more days of rest.”
She sighed. “I am glad to be far away. And to rest. You cannot know how grateful I am for it.”
He looked down at her apprehensively.
“And I am positively dying of thirst.”
At once he rose, uncoiling his great form, to retrieve a cup of melted snowpack.
–
In the shadows of the Frankenstein home, where white flowers still lay strewn and crushed by the feet of panicked guests, Victor was awake. He had been awake through the night, into morning, swallowing back the bitter bile of his rage. William had not spoken a word since the end of the wedding. He sat in a pale torpor in his dressing gown on a chaise, staring a hole into the wall. Tears had come and gone intermittently, and now he had cried them dry and red. Elizabeth was alive – Victor knew this with absolute certainty – yet he had exhausted his efforts to convince his brother of the fact. If she had not died of her wound, William reasoned, then she had been murdered by the Creature, strangled or else mutilated by his hand. Surely he sought revenge for what Victor had done and hoped to ruin the Frankenstein family entirely. In destroying Elizabeth, he would destroy not only a precious union but a crucial fortune – he was clever enough to take her before their vows could be exchanged.
Victor knew she was alive, but why had the Creature abducted her? What could it possibly want with her? His mind turned over grim images: the foul thing holding her captive, tearing the wedding gown from her still bleeding body, hunched obscenely over her in his nakedness while he took her for himself, denying any man her precious purity forever. Elizabeth’s sweet face distorted in fear, her breast bare, her lovely hair undone beneath her as she cried out to be saved without a soul to hear her, “William, Victor, help me!” The unbearable thought! There was only one course of action, it was certain. He had bestowed ample charity upon the Creature by allowing it to survive so long. It had gone out in the world – doing God only knows what – learning to speak in some horrid, mocking imitation of humanity, and now the blood of the innocents it had likely murdered with its demonic strength was now on his hands. Yes, it would have to be destroyed, destroyed so completely that it could not resuscitate itself. It would return to him again, he knew. One would find the other; they always would. He approached a window where the cold light of day slanted into the room, shining so brightly it made his head ache. He assessed the bleak, white expanse of the grounds. Yes, he would devise a plan.