Frankenstein's Creature x reincarnated!reader headcanons
Disclaimer: the following heacanons are based off of the original novel, not its adaptations. Reader is from our world and reincarnates into the world of Frankenstein.
Edit: there is now a fic based off of this.
You are a college student studying English Literature, who reincarnated into Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as one of Victor Frankenstein’s childhood friends and college roommate (for the sake of making this as gender neutral as possible while still adhering to the conventions of the time period, pretend that you disguised yourself as a man in order to attend college if you are not a man/masc presenting).
One night, you wake to the sound of deep breathing, only to come face to face with the beautifully uncanny face of a man made up of corpse parts strewn together.
Quickly putting the pieces together, you realise that tonight is the night your roommate decided to challenge the laws of nature, and that the strange corpse-man with an unnerving grin observing you is none other than the Creature.
You have always held sympathy towards Frankenstein’s creation. You wished that someone had been there for him to ease his loneliness; to treat him with kindness instead of revulsion for once. And it seems that whatever higher being is out there has heard your thoughts, for you now have the chance to be that person.
Fighting the urge to scream, you tentatively reach out a hand towards the uncanny intruder. A gesture he happily reciprocates, filled with nothing but curiosity and warmth towards your existence.
Your hands envelop each other and the Creature looks towards your intertwined hands with wonder in his eyes. With his other hand, he reaches for your face and…
It is at that moment that the door to your room bursts open, and a clearly distressed Victor Frankenstein drags you out of your room, not even sparing a glance at his poor creation, who had raised his head towards his creator in hope of acknowledgement.
Your last memory of the Creature is his outstretched hand trying to grasp at you, craving the warmth that you so eagerly provided, until Victor drags you away from your shared apartment.
It is then that he confesses his actions to you, expressing his revulsion towards his creation and how he wishes to have nothing to do with him anymore. Seizing an opportunity to change the future, you offer to house the Creature, since Victor no longer sees use in him, and after a much heated back and forth between the two of you, the scientist eventually relents and allows you to have his creation under the condition that no one is to know of his existence other than the two of you.
Yet when you re-enter your apartment, the Creature is nowhere to be seen, having fled into the woods after witnessing his creator’s brutal rejection. Try as you might, any attempt at locating the Creature proves futile, as he is surprisingly elusive for a giant made of amalgamated corpses.
Then one day, you find him. Or rather, he finds you.
It was supposed to be William Frankenstein the Creature targeted as his last ditch attempt at earning anything other than contempt from the human race. Instead, he found you.
One moment you were minding your own business, and the next you were swiped into the arms of the enormous man-made being, all but begging you to love him.
“You who have shown neither contempt nor perjury towards my existence, you who had so eagerly held out your hand to encompass my own, you who were the only being not to scream at my wretched continence, I beg of you! Save me from this miserable loneliness.”
He does not give you time to reply. Whisking you away into the wilderness, where he had built a makeshift shelter for the two of you to reside in.
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Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Cw: mentions of death, reincarnation, isekai, slight body horror (mentions of stitching body parts together and corpses), forced crossdressing (if not masc), period typical problematic behaviors (it’s Europe in the 18th century), reader is given a name but does not identify to it (treat it as an allias)
Hey, so remember the headcanons I posted about Frankenstein? Well, I decided to create a mini series based around them. This part is largely just fleshing out the ideas presented within the headcanons and giving a little exploration of the reader's past. Part two will follow the Creature and what he's been up to until the reunion with the reader. English is not my first language so please be kind.
Disclaimer: the following is based off of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the book, and not its adaptations. The lines inside brackets (like this) are only applicable to those that are afab/non-masc.
Story begins under the cut.
In your previous life, you were a college student striving to get your degree in English Literature. You had your friends, your tuition fees, your exams and essays to stress about, and you had your books to read. It was a simple life. Nothing special, nothing extraordinary, just normal; you were no genius, nor a star. You were simply, you.
Which is why your current situation seemed very odd to you: you were not someone who would be considered a ‘main character’, so why had fate chosen you in particular? Why had you awakened in the body of an infant, with a mind far too developed for your biological age, after meeting an untimely death at the hands of a drunken driver?
It took all but three days to realise that this was not the afterlife, and that you had experienced the phenomenon known as reincarnation. Yet what puzzled you the most was the fact that you seemed to have reincarnated into the past rather than the future; from the antiquities surrounding your everyday life to the way your new family acted around you, you were certain that you had been reborn somewhere in Europe, between the 17th to 19th century.
In this life, you were named Evan Hartman the Second after your new father. Your father, who had insisted on naming you and raising you as a proper English gentleman in his ideal image, regardless of which sex you were born as. You see, Evan Hartman the First had long suffered from infertility, already at the age of forty four and having gone through three wives before marrying your mother as his last hope of begetting a child. Evan was a greedy man who detested the fact that his wealth would go to a cousin should he sire a daughter, and thus, upon learning of his young wife’s pregnancy, decreed that the babe born must be raised as his son and heir regardless of what they were.
You disliked that name, for it never quite felt like you; you were but an image of someone else’s making. And so you would call yourself your true name, (y/n) (l/n), the one you held on to from your previous life, dreaming of the day when you would be able to just be you again.
A week after your eleventh birthday, your family moved to Geneva, Switzerland. The reason behind this move was unclear to you, you briefly remember your father mentioning something about a business opportunity aboard, yet within the month your family had begun to settle into your new life. And it was here in Geneva where you had the revelation of a lifetime.
One morning, your father had introduced you to one of his associates and his son. His son, who’s name was Victor Frankenstein. As in, the protagonist of Mary Shelly’s novel, the one you had been studying for an essay before your untimely death, the one you now realise you had been reincarnated into, Frankenstein.
You have always felt pity towards Frankenstein’s creation: you felt sorry for his lonely existence and wished that someone had shown the Creature kindness for once in his life. You remember wondering, as you pondered over his analysis in your essay, whether the Creature could have remained a benevolent force if someone had shown him kindness for once in his life.
A question you would have the opportunity to answer for yourself now.
You had a plan: you were going to save the Creature and in doing so save others harmed by his hands. For why would you sit by idly and let tragedy strike when you had the opportunity to change fate? To do that though, you first had to befriend his creator. This was a process that proved to be surprisingly easy: all you had to do was engage in philosophical and scientific debates with him, and listen to his woes on the odd occasion when neither Henry or Elizabeth was available to him.
Soon, Victor Frankenstein became one of your closest childhood friends, and so it was only natural for you to suggest living together when the both of you were accepted into Ingolstadt; you were no science major, but they did offer you a business program which you had gladly accepted, as it meant being able to keep tabs on Victor and make it far easier to approach the Creature after his birth.
The first two years of your life in Ingolstadt were relatively peaceful (with only a few close calls when Victor nearly discovered that he was not living with a man). Then, it happened. Victor Frankenstein had finally tampered with the laws of nature.
Your first meeting with the Creature was… not ideal to say the least. You were hoping to be there when he awakened, guiding him through the world and providing the comfort that his creator would fail to give. Instead, you were awakened in the middle of the night to the sounds of heavy, ragged breathing and the smell of what could only be described as waterlogged chemicals.
To the side of your bed stood a being unlike any other. His face was a visage of angelic beauty seen in renaissance paintings; with long black hair, lips the color of charcoal and eyes of molten gold, he emitted the grace of a prince of the underworld. His limbs, long and angular and so pale that you could see the veins running through them from the moonlight, were akin to that of a porcelain doll. His body, with reasonably well-defined muscles and skin omitting a greyish blue hue, was covered in stitch marks from where limbs were attached to the body and flesh was melded together. Individually, the parts that made up the whole were nothing short of beautiful: a perfectly symmetrical face, slender limbs and a strong but slim build. Each and every individual part of him was flawless, and that was the problem.
He was too perfect.
Humans, by nature, were not perfect creatures; little imperfections and microscopic flaws in their designs were what made them, well, human. And so the Creature, who, by design, had no such things, created an overwhelming sense of uncanniness to the human brain, for it failed to comprehend a being that was totally flawless. This uncanniness, in turn, meant that the Creature was hideous in the eyes of the human beholder, for their eyes recognised him as a distortion of humanity. It did not help that the Creature was so clearly made of the parts of the dead; all it did was fuel the sense of uncanniness, as someone dead should by no means be alive.
You fought the urge to scream, both from the shock of waking up to an unknown man staring at your face, and from the instinctual repulsion felt towards a being that looked like someone twisted a human being into a renaissance statue made of flesh. You knew that the Creature would undoubtedly be wounded by your repulsion, and becoming yet another human who shunned him was the last thing on your mind. Tentatively, you raised your hand towards the Creature, beckoning him to come closer to you. He, in response, eagerly shuffled forward, the smile on his face growing even larger, and reached out his own hand to envelop your own.
For a while, time seemed to freeze. You and the Creature stared into each other's eyes, his searching, yours understanding, and a mutual feeling of safety blooms between you: your mind no longer perceives him as a threat, and his heart rejoices at the warmth your hand provides. Then, the Creature begins to lean ever so slightly in your direction, raising his other hand towards your face as if to caress you.
Bang!
And just like that, the moment is ruined. A distraught Victor Frankenstein barges into your room and drags you out of the apartment by the very hand that had held the Creature’s own meer moments ago. Said being makes a noise the mix of a yelp and a growl upon your sudden departure, reaching out towards you and his creator in an act of desperation. His golden eyes find yours in the moment of flurry, and you swear that they are begging you to come back, to hold his hand once again and share with him the warmth of your being.
Yet you cannot answer the Creature’s silent pleas, as you are all but thrown outside, where an agitated Victor scrambles out explanations and confessions. When he is finished he takes a moment to assess your physical state, seemingly looking for any injuries that might have been inflicted by his creation. He does not discover any (but he does discover that you are not a man, and takes a few minutes begging the lord for forgiveness at having shared a home with someone of an opposing gender).
“Let me have him.”
Is what you say to the befuddled scientist.
“You clearly hold no favor towards this creation of yours and feel shame for his existence. Let me house this being, for I have inherited my father’s estates upon his death last June, one of which is all but abandoned deep within the Alps. Let me take the Creature there, where he will never be seen by you nor your peers ever again.”
At first, your friend is extremely skeptical about this plan, but after an hour of convincing, Victor finally relents and allows you to do as you see fit with his creation. Walking towards your shared apartment, you can’t help but feel giddy at the prospect of having changed the future for good.
Yet perhaps you had celebrated too soon, as by the time you arrive at your destination, the Creature is long gone; you should have known that such a confused and curious being would not stay put for long.
In the months that follow, you try desperately to locate the Creature, hoping to bring him home before he experiences one too many miseries that send him spiraling on a quest for revenge against the Creator who rejected him. You follow trails, rumors, suspicious folk tales, anything to get a hold of him; you put great use in your position as a merchant, utilising various connections across the world to get a hold of the Creature’s place of residence. Yet all proves to be futile in the end: no matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to follow a trail long enough for you to actually reunite with your ever elusive friend.
And so, you are left with the hard truth: you failed. You failed at shielding the Creature from experiencing nothing but the cruelty of humanity, and now he will come back as hateful as he was in the original novel.
You want to scream; you were so damn close! If only Victor had not dragged you out that day, perhaps you truly could have changed fate for the better. But alas, perhaps some things are simply meant to be. Your next viable option for a better future would be to somehow prevent the murder of William Frankenstein, and convince Victor to create a companion for the Creature so that he may elope with her like he promised to do in the original novel.
Or so you thought.
It turns out that fate does not like you in the slightest, because you are now face to face with the unnervingly beautiful visage of the very being who had eluded you for so long. The Creature holds you in a vice-like grip, as if he is afraid you would disappear again, and cradles you against his chest.
“Oh my salvation, I have waited so long to be beholden to your warmth once more!”
The Creature rambles fervently.
“You who have shown neither contempt nor perjury towards my existence, you who had so eagerly held out your hand to encompass my own, you who were the only being not to scream at my wretched continence, I beg of you! Save me from this miserable loneliness, for no other will have me to hold as you once did.”
It seems as though your little encounter with the Creature had left much more of an impact on him than you had thought it would. Whatever shall you do….
Part 2 of this. So... in the last part I said that this part would follow the Creature and what he's been up to. Well, things have changed since then and while it does feature the Creature talking about his experiences, this serves more as a proper sequel now than a different perspective like I had originally planned. I hope that you enjoy reading it regardless.
Disclaimer: the following is based off of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the book, and not its adaptations.
@23trendy @superlegend216
If someone had told you during either of your lives that you would have a pale, giant of a man made solely of the desecrated dead clinging to your body as if he were a Koala clinging to its mother, you would have been seriously concerned for their mental health. After all, surely you would not be placed in a situation where Frankenstein’s Creature develops an unhealthy, borderline fanatical obsession over your very being, right?
Well, you were wrong. So very wrong.
Kneeling before you as if he were subjugating himself in the eyes of an angel, the Creature continues to hold on to your body, as if he is terrified that you would disappear if he were to let you go; you can feel the trembling of his body and almost move in to sooth him of his terrors, had you not been reminded of the precarious situation you had currently been placed in.
Based on your knowledge of the timeline, the being before you was no longer the wide-eyed, innocent creation that once sought out your warmth out of instinctual need. No, this was Frankenstein’s Monster, a volatile and highly unstable creature who was willing to attempt the kidnapping of a child out of a desperation to feel loved, only to murder that child and frame an innocent woman for his death. This was not someone you could gently coax into the light, shaping his underdeveloped mind in favor of humanity, this was the main villain of the story, the one who would wreak havoc on your friend’s life in the name of vengeance for his lonesome existence.
To be fair, you still think that the Creature is completely valid for his rage against Victor: you too would be furious if you found out that your parent had abandoned you because they deemed you hideous. However, just because you validated the Creature’s rage does not mean that you wish to be a part of his revenge plot in any way, shape, or form; you would much rather prefer to play mediator between the estranged creator and creation rather than quite literally be hugged to death by the latter.
Seeming to sense your discomfort, the Creature reluctantly lets go of your torso, only to reach out for your hand and hold it against his own, just like the night when the two of you had first met; you swear that the Creature audibly purred when the familiar feeling of your hand enclosed his own once again. He looks directly into your wide eyes, his own shining with want as he slowly inches closer to your face.
“Ahh! Monster!”
And just like that night, the surprisingly gentle moment between the two of you was ruined by the sudden intrusion of a Frankenstein. This time, it was the scientist’s younger brother who had cut the moment short; William Frankenstein, with as much vigor as a young boy of his age could muster, began screaming at the Creature, demanding for your immediate release.
“You ogre! You fiend! Let go of my brother's companion! Let go this instant!”
“What is the meaning of this? Child, I mean no harm; cease this petulant display this instance!”
But despite the Creature’s pleas and assurances that no harm would come to you, William continued to scream about how the Creature would tear you apart and eat you, just like the monsters in the fairytales his mother used to read to him before she passed away.
“This is getting out of hand. Forgive me.”
Before you had time to process what he had just said, the Creature lifted you up into his arms and ran at a speed impossible for the human mind to comprehend. In fact, you outright passed out as soon as he took off, due to the intenseness of the velocity of his movements. The last thing you saw before your consciousness slipped from your mind was a crying William Frankenstein screaming at your now kidnapper, and a horrified audience of townspeople who had gathered to witness the scene, drawn in by the boy’s loud yelling.
—
The sound of a burning fire is the first thing your befuddled mind registered after you had regained consciousness.
“You have awoken.”
Startled, you swivel your body to see the Creature staring at you, wearing the same eerie grin that he wore on the night of his creation. Except now, a hint of madness danced within the eyes that once held nothing but curiosity and wonder, and you were left with the daunting realisation that whatever affection the Creature currently felt for you was likely fueled by the aforementioned madness.
“Where are we? Why have you brought me here?”
You manage to croak out despite the increasingly daunting realisation that the man in front of you had just kidnapped you in front of the whole of Geneva; you would rather not think about what sort of repercussions that would bring, both to you and to the direction of the storyline as a whole.
“Be calm! I intend no harm. I simply beg that you hear me, for I have long awaited your sympathies.”
And with that, Frankenstein’s creation began to regale you of his tale, a story you were so intimately familiar with, having poured your focus into dissecting his words in preparations for your essays on the very topic of his character. Indeed, as the being before you monologues about his life, how he came into consciousness with shock, how he was shunned by a village he attempted to join, and how he had made a life out of hiding and foraging in the woods, you can’t help but somewhat predict what he would say next.
It is only when he gets to the part about his stalking of the blind man’s, De Lacey’s, family does the Creature say something that comes as a complete surprise to you.
“As I gazed upon the happy lives of Felix and Safie, my mind could not help but wander; I wondered if someone too would embrace me with as much fervor as Felix did his Arabian, and place loving kisses on my accursed form. Then, I thought of you.”
‘Wait, what?’
“I remembered your touch, your warmth, and the calming light in your eyes, glimmering in the moonlight, as if to assure me that all would be fine. If any would ever be willing to look at me the way my cottage goers looked at one another, be that in a familial or yearning light, it would have been you.”
Okay. That was new. The Creature did not contemplate about the possibilities of having a partner until after the family living in the cottage had rejected him; he did not contemplate about love from witnessing the relationship between Felix and his wife, and he certainly did not have you to fulfil the role of his other half in his musings.
“Thinking of you only strove to further my convictions: that my cottage goers would look past my deformities and embrace me as their friend through the will of their virtues. For if you could spare a touch of kindness towards a stranger in the night, then surely these benevolent people could come to embrace a wretch such as myself.”
Again, this was nothing like what the Creature said in the novel, having had absolutely no prior experiences to influence his decisions about the cottage goers. It seems that the consequences of altering events of the novel were catching up to you.
“Yet for all my hopes, my plan had ended in disaster: I was beaten and cast out like the hated mongrel that I am, and hunted for reviling the world with my monstrosity. Your brethren had made it abundantly clear that there was no place amongst them, and so I was left to wallow in the misery of my creation. It was then that I decided to seek my creator, for he alone had cursed my existence.”
“And so you came to Geneva, to seek retribution for the man who had doomed you.”
The Creature nodded.
“Our reunion was not one I had sought out for myself, but one I welcome with my entire being. I had retired into the corners of the fields for the night, contemplating on how to approach my creator, when suddenly, my sights beheld an angel.”
You had assumed that this ‘angel’ was William, for he was described as, and is, a beautiful child. But no, it turns out that the Creature meant you.
“There you were, ever more radiant than in my memories, smiling amongst your fellows as if you knew of no evils. Upon witnessing this, a boiling envy had seized me, for I was reminded that my wretched creator had robbed me of the warmth that you so willingly provide. And so, seized by the impulse to bask in the flames of compassion once again, I approached you.”
The Creature looks remorseful as he says the next part.
“I did not wish to bereave you of your kin, truly, for I know the feeling of ever encompassing loneliness far more intimately than any other. But a Frankenstein, cursed be that name, was attempting to take you away from me; a Frankenstein was once again seeking to deprive me of your warmth and I could not allow it. And so in desperation I succumbed to my base instincts and performed an unforgivable act. Yet please, understand my plight!”
Like he did just before he kidnapped you, the Creature knelt in front of you with golden eyes brimming with desperation.
“You are my last hope; my only chance at companionship lies with you. Like Prometheus to his kinsmen, you have given me the gift of light, the gift of warmth, and I find myself completely helpless to its flames. Please… provide me salvation!”
You are at a loss for words. Truly, you didn’t think that the Creature would cling so tightly to the very brief moment that you shared together. However, you supposed that you too would find yourself hanging on to the one positive experience you’ve had in your life if your life was filled with nothing but contempt like the Creature’s had been.
Although you could do without the idolization, a wave of pity washed over you at how desperate the Creature was towards you; every time he called you his salvation, you were left reminded of the fact that this being had suffered such cruelties that he had literally resorted to relying on a practical stranger for kindness as a last ditch attempt at receiving human compassion.
Slowly, you reach out a hand towards your kidnapper turned companion, which he eagerly grasps and holds as if it is a lifeline, and ask one simple question. One that the Creature had not heard in his entire existence.
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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 6, Part 7
cw: reincarnation, isekai, kidnapping, isolation, obsessive tendancies, mild stockholm syndrome, mention of corpses, self loathing, internalised homophobia, reader has a given name but does not identify to it (treat it as an alias)
Real life and a lack of motivation have been kicking my ass lately, so I won't be able to update as frequently as I did before. Rest assured, I will not abandon this series.
Disclaimer: the following is based off of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the book, and not its adaptations. Lines written in red are for fem readers, lines written in blue are for masc readers, and lines written in purple are for gender neutral readers. Please follow these distinctions and read what is most comfortable for you.
@23trendy @superlegend216 @agustdeeyaa
After that conversation, something changed in the dynamic you shared with Adam. Before, he would hover around you obsessively during your times alone together, almost as if he were showing reverence to a deity of benevolence. Although he dared not touch you unprompted, both out of respect and out of fear that his "abhorrent touch” would corrupt your “pure flesh” (his words, not yours), yet significantly leaned towards you like a dog expecting to be pet by their owner every time he was within your vicinity. Overall, the impression you got from him was that of an affection-starved man who craved physical intimacy deeply but did not know how to properly ask for it.
However, from the moment you had uttered words of thanks towards him, something in Adam’s behavior shifted. Before, he was somewhat like a shy animal wanting to explore the possibilities of human touch. Now, he would shift uncomfortably every time you would show him affection, an undecipherable expression marring his face as he backs away from you.
At first, you did not mind this change in attitude too much; if anything you were somewhat glad at not having to deal with the awkwardness of Adam’s intense stare on your being whenever he silently made his need for affection known. You assumed that Victor’s creation was finally beginning to experience regret at having robbed you of life amongst your peers, thus was distancing himself out of respect for you.
Yet as the days passed Adam had gone from avoiding physical contact with you to avoiding interactions all together, you were forced to deal with the all-encompassing feeling of isolation in his absence. Apparently, having someone you could talk to within reach yet being denied companionship was so much worse than simply being left alone in a hut in the middle of the Alps: being granted the illusion of companionhood but being refused human interaction was like having food dangled in front of you out of reach when you were hungry.
You briefly wondered if this was what Adam himself had felt during his time in the woods, when he was forced to watch humanity interact around him, always watching but never to be a part of their world.
The final nail in the coffin was when Adam brought up the possibility of cancelling your daily literature discussions, the one activity where you were granted the grace of friendship, that you decided enough was enough.
As soon as the words left the mouth of your self-isolating companion, you exploded.
“First, you take me from my home by force. Then, you keep me on top of a mountain with only your companionship, and now you are refusing to give even that? You tell me that you wish for my friendship, yet return my kindness with abandonment and isolation. You have become to me the monsters who had rejected you!”
“No, no! Do not speak like that!”
Adam all but exploded in an array of panic.
“Forgive me, my only companion, for I have failed you once more! I did not mean for you to learn of the bone-crushing loneliness I had been subjected to, for suffering of such kind is only befitting towards a wretch such as I!”
“Then why do this? Why kidnap me, ask for affection, and all but abandon me once you have had your fill? I thought you were better than the monster your creator condemned you to be.”
“A fiend such as I knows not how to embrace a creature of light! I have done you a great disservice!”
The Creature kneels in front of you, reminiscent of a sinner repenting to a priest. His voice trembles with raw emotions of guilt and self-loathing as he speaks.
“Forgive me, kind one, but I could not bear to sully your radiance any further! Your words, the words of thanks towards an undeserving monster, shook me greatly. No longer could I pretend that I was not the Devil of your tale; no longer could I pretend to be anything but a daemon of the night who had kidnapped a fair soul for his own damned pleasure.”
“In you, I had hoped to find my Eve. I had hoped that we would create our own Eden amongst the flora and fauna of the wild, free from the judgemental eyes of the world and surrounded by innocence. Yet now I see that it was never meant to be.”
You were stunned. Adam had basically given you a love confession: Adam and Eve were a couple, made for each other by the hands of God to be husband and wife. If your Adam wished to be like the biblical pair with you, it could only mean one thing.
“Are you… in love with me?”
Adam’s silent look of resignation was more than enough proof of your suspicion.
“For how long?”
“Would you be repulsed if I said that I had loved you from the moment you first offered me your hand?”
“No, just… surprised.”
“I understand. It must be a shock that a being such as I could ever feel an emotion as pure as love.”
“That’s not what I meant. It’s just… how can you fall in love with someone at first sight?”
“How could one not fall for the only person to willingly offer goodness to their wretched continence? Great figures such as Shakespeare have written masterpieces of young love blooming for less. Would it be so strange that I would year for a touch of kindness?”
There were tears in Adam’s eyes now, but they never fell, for Frankenstein’s monster was an expert at holding back his sorrow.
“Had you shown even the slightest amount of hesitance towards my approach, I would have been disillusioned long ago. Yet again and again you provided me warmth; you did not push me away no matter if I had taken you against your will. I had hoped that perhaps my foolhardy dream could be realised, but I could not lie to myself any longer.”
Your jailer turned companion turned monstrous admirer stood, turning his back towards you as if afraid to face you.
“I was never meant to be your Adam, just as you were never meant to be my Eve. For how could a creature of light be the mate of a creature of darkness? How could a living, breathing human become the wife of a dead man walking, a beast of strewn together corpses?”
“In you, I had hoped to find a brother. I had hoped that we would nurture a bond of comradery seen in the likes of noble knights. But now I understand that it was a foolish dream that could never come to pass.”
“Because it is not noble to kidnap your brother-in-arms?”
“That is one reason, yes.”
“Then what is the other?”
Adam was silent for a moment; based on how the muscles on his face twitched and how he opened and closed his mouth as if to say something then quickly deciding against it, you assumed that the answer he was about to give was rather complicated.
Finally, your companion of strange circumstances gave an answer.
“Forgive me, for I fear that I have sullied you by giving in to the whims of my monstrous nature.”
“What do you mean?”
Did he wish to eat you or something?
“I believe I have fallen in love with you.”
Oh.
You now knew exactly what Adam was talking about in regards to his “monstrous nature”. After all, gay relationships were heavily frowned upon during this time period, so if Adam had developed romantic feelings for a man while being a man himself, he would have naturally been conditioned to thinking that it was terrible to feel that way.
“Are you repulsed?”
Adam looked at you with a distraught expression, as if to say “I don’t blame you if you find me disgusting”.
“No, just… surprised. I did not think that you would feel that way towards me.”
On all accounts from the novel, Frankenstein’s creation did not show any signs of being queer, specifically requesting for a female as a mate, although some literary scholars did argue for a more queer coded reading of Shelley’s work. Then again, you supposed that it was not fair to have assumed the Creature was straight just because he wanted a wife, especially considering the social expectations of the time period which he lived in.
“I did not expect to feel anything but friendship towards yourself. Yet the more I was blessed with your presence, the more I realised that I wanted for more than simple comradery; in you, I had found a mate to quell my eternal loneliness.”
There were tears in Adam’s eyes now, but they never fell, for Frankenstein’s monster was an expert at holding back his sorrow.
“Had you shown even the slightest amount of hesitance towards my approach, I would have been disillusioned long ago. Yet again and again you provided me warmth; you did not push me away no matter if I had taken you against your will. I had hoped that perhaps my foolhardy dream could be realised, but I could not lie to myself any longer.”
Your jailer turned companion turned monstrous admirer stood, turning his back towards you as if afraid to face you.
“I was never meant to be an Adam, just the Devil who would steal a true Adam from his paradise. For how could a creature of light be with a creature of darkness? How could a living, breathing human become the companion of a dead man walking, a beast of strewn together corpses?”
“In you, I had hoped to find a friend. Someone who would be by my side through the hardships of life, much like how my creator had come to rely on the one known as Henry Clerval.”
You were honestly surprised that Adam knew about Henry: you knew he eventually tracked him down to kill him as a part of his revenge in Shelley’s novel, yet you had no clue that the Creature was already well-informed about Victor’s associates (he must have been stalking his creator for quite some time).
“Now I understand that my foolhardy dream was never meant to be. For I have committed a grave sin in robbing you of your life, and I found myself unable to see you as a friend after our reunion.”
“Because you felt guilty for my kidnapping?”
“That is one reason, yes.”
“Then what is the other?”
“I believe I have fallen in love with you.”
Oh.
“Are you repulsed?”
Adam looked at you with a distraught expression, as if to say “I don’t blame you if you find me disgusting”.
“No, just… surprised. I did not think that you would feel that way towards me.”
You were not a woman. You had made that clear when you first requested Adam for warm clothes to help survive on the snowy Alps. On all accounts from the novel, Frankenstein’s creation did not show any signs of being queer, specifically requesting for a female as a mate, although some literary scholars did argue for a more queer coded reading of Shelley’s work. Then again, you supposed that it was not fair to have assumed the Creature was straight just because he wanted a wife, especially considering the social expectations of the time period which he lived in.
And regardless of the Creature’s supposed pansexuality, you supposed that there was a sense of kinship he felt towards you that led to him perceiving you as a potential mate, with the both of you not fitting into social norms by being a reanimated corpse-chimera and not adhering to gender binaries. After all, those outcast by society would often find solace in each other.
“I did not expect to feel anything but friendship towards yourself. Yet the more I was blessed with your presence, the more I realised that I wanted for more than simple companionhood; in you, I had found a mate to quell my eternal loneliness.”
There were tears in Adam’s eyes now, but they never fell, for Frankenstein’s monster was an expert at holding back his sorrow.
“Had you shown even the slightest amount of hesitance towards my approach, I would have been disillusioned long ago. Yet again and again you provided me warmth; you did not push me away no matter if I had taken you against your will. I had hoped that perhaps my foolhardy dream could be realised, but I could not lie to myself any longer.”
Your jailer turned companion turned monstrous admirer stood, turning his back towards you as if afraid to face you.
“I was never meant to be an Adam, just the Devil who would steal a true child of God from their paradise. For how could a creature of light be with a creature of darkness? How could a living, breathing human become the companion of a dead man walking, a beast of strewn together copses?”
You… did not know what to think of all of this.
The Creature developing romantic feelings for you was always an expectation you had had at the back of your mind. After all, he did ask for a mate in the original novel, clearly wanting to experience a romantic bond with another who would accept him. So really, it was not too shocking to hear Adam’s confession of love towards you.
You just weren’t sure how you felt about him in that regard.
On one hand, he was your kidnapper. Your monstrous jailer who had forced you to live a life of isolation for the past… however long you were up in the mountains (there was no calendar, and the only way to tell the time was from observing the position of the sun in the sky). But on the other hand, he was also your sole companion, the one you would share deep philosophical discussions with well into the night, and had treated you with nothing but gentleness and affection since you had got here. Even his awkward staring for affection became somewhat endearing after some time; no one had looked at you as if you were something incredibly precious like Adam had, with all your previous relations seeing you as some commodity - even Victor, your faithful childhood friend couldn’t help but make you feel as if you were his second option after Clerval.
Adam’s devotion was both flattering and stifling, and you had no clue which way you should lean more towards. All your life you had been nothing but a convenient side character for the protagonist and his family, and here was this miserable creature looking at you with pure, undulated love that you had not experienced in either of your lives.
You opened your mouth, about to give some form of an answer towards Adam’s confession, when suddenly, you heard a voice you had not heard for a very long time.
“Evan!”
Standing in the open doorway (it seems you and Adam were so caught up in one another that neither of you heard the door opening), covered in snow from head to toe, with a furious expression on his face was none other than a vindictive Victor Frankenstein. About to make good on his oath to rescue you and put an end to his creation’s terror.
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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
cw: reincarnation, isekai, 18th century European mindsets, mild body horror (very brief mention of corpses), multiple endings
The finally to this series is here! Honestly, I was debating on how I want to end things but since this is a reader insert, I decided to give you a choice on whether or not you wanted to be with the Creature, rather than make it one ending. Thank you to all those who stuck around till the end and I hope you had a pleasant read.
Disclaimer: the following is based off of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the book, and not its adaptations.
That was the only explanation Victor Frankenstein had given you before he had all but dragged you away from his home, onto a ship and out to sea, drifting ever so far away from Geneva. It was only when you had left the shores of your childhood home behind that Victor began to give in to your demands and inform you of what exactly was going on; you had half the mind to throw him overboard for causing such distress, but ultimately decided against it as that would have left you stranded on a ship full of strangers with no idea of where you were going or how you would get back.
“You are in grave danger, my friend. My cursed beast is after you, demanding that I return you to his infernal grasp!”
“And your response to this was to kidnap me and ship me off to God knows where?!”
“It was not a kidnapping! I merely did what was necessary to save you!”
“You displaced me from my place of residence without my consent! A place, mind you, that you had imprisoned me in!”
“Once again, I only did what was necessary to guarantee your safety and survival! I could not bear to see one of my closest friends be ruined by my failure!”
“So that’s what this is about, is it? Your inability to see past your own failings? You clinging to some semblance of justice by treating me as if I am an object to be kept away from prying hands?”
“Then what else was I supposed to do, let that abominable mistake of science and nature take you? Where he would jail you up in the mountains and horde you like a dragon?”
“Perhapse if you had just talked to him…!”
“Talk? Talk!? And you expect the monster to listen?!”
“He is not a monster!”
“He kidnapped you!”
“And now, so have you!”
“I did it to keep you safe! He did it for selfish pleasure! There is a stark difference between acting on behalf of a friend who is mentally unstable and abducting the helpless for sick gain.”
“I am not some psychiatric patient, Victor, I do not need your help.”
“Clearly, you do.”
And with that, Victor Frankenstein left with an air of finality, leaving you to wallow in your own misery.
‘At least Adam didn’t coddle me and treat me like a liability. And actually listened to me….’
Once again, your mind drifted back to the gentle creature who had kept you company in the snowy Alps; if you had to choose your kidnapper, you would certainly prefer it to be the corpse-giant who would give you books and find you clothing to match your accommodations, as opposed to the arrogant scientist who staunchly believes in his own delusions. But alas, you were stuck in the middle of the ocean for the time being, thus you decided to occupy your mind with mundane tasks, like cloud watching, until you reached shore. Once there, you would figure out how to escape the paranoid clutches of your childhood friend now turned into your jailer, disappearing into the night at the first opportunity that presented itself.
And indeed, an opportunity did present itself to you, when you were three weeks into your impromptu journey half way across Europe (it turned out that the route Victor had taken you on was the same route he had taken in the original novel while on ‘holiday’ before creating the Creature’s bride). One night, when sleep had finally caught up to Victor after weeks of standing vigil at your door, you decided to take the chance and fled. With only a spare bag of clothes and your essentials, you were not even half way into the surrounding forest when a familiar voice greeted you.
“My beloved….”
Whipping your head around with what felt to you as the speed of light, you found yourself coming face to face with the glowing golden eyes of a man who was all wrong in the eyes of nature. A walking corpse, a patchwork giant, the being before you gave off the same eerie feeling of uncannyness as he did all that time ago, back when you had reached a tentative hand to an inquisitive new life, back when you had started it all and landed yourself in this horrendous mess.
“My salvation, you have returned to me.”
Adam reached out his hand as if to grab you, but paused his movements half way to your face, and drew in on himself as if he was afraid that his touch would harm you.
“I… should not.”
That was… new. In all honesty you were fully expecting to be whisked away into the night, being re-acquainted with your cottage in the Alps, or perhaps some other place that was far away from society; you were rather far from home, and Adam would surely not risk Victor reclaiming you any time soon by returning to where you originally were.
Curiosity getting the better of you, alongside sympathy for a creature who looked so broken in the moonlight, you decided to risk it.
“Adam? Is something wrong?”
“You are as benevolent as ever, my light. But no. Nothing is wrong. Or rather, everything is wrong. With you gone, I found myself falling into the all-encompassing darkness which became my lonely home. I found myself returning to the monster that I once was, a beast unworthy of sullying such a lovely soul as yourself, and I had forsook the very kindness that you had taught me.”
You waited for him to continue.
“I threatened Frankenstein that if he were not to return you I would rob him of his own joys, only to regret my actions once I regained a sense of clarity from the rage that threatened to turn me into a mindless beast. I found myself thinking: my beloved must hate me for this, for I have devolved back into the beast, the kidnapper, the jailer, and not the companion. Not the friend; not Adam. I could not bear it! Could not bear the thought that you would frown upon me and renounce your goodwill to me, yet I could not keep my wretched heart from aching for your presence ever the same.”
“And so you followed me?”
“I was on that ship. When Frankenstein took you from his home I followed through the shadows. I slipped in through the docks and onto the storage compartment, and have been trailing your journey ever since, for witnessing your complexion, even from afar, soothed the illness of my heart.”
You didn’t know whether you found that extremely creepy or insanely romantic.
“Yet the more I looked, the more I yearned. And the more I yearned, the more I felt unworthy to bask in your light. For how could a creature so vile as I, who served as your kidnapper and stalker ever be entitled to your forgiveness? Thus, I am giving you a choice, beloved one.”
Adam knelt down in front of you, one hand extended out as an offering for you to take, and pledged in a wavering voice.
“I am giving you freedom. Take my hand, and I shall take you away from Frankenstein and his mad ravings, find you a place where the mad scientist and his kin shall bother you no longer. You will be free to do as you wish, dress as you wish, be called as you wish; you need only be yourself.”
“And… the other option?”
“Ask me to be yours, an eternal companion, and I shall take you where no man would ever find you. We will have each other, and we shall languish in our very own Eden, free from the sins of humanity and their judgement; free to exist, as one.”
There was hope in his eyes as he said the last part, but Adam was quick to squash it, trying so hard not to get his hopes up and be demanding of you.
You now had a choice to make. And after some deliberation, sorting out your own mind and feelings for Adam, you had your answer.
<If you chose to be free alone>
“I wish to be free… alone. I’m sorry Adam, but I cannot give you the love which you desire.”
Understandably, Adam looked devastated at your rejection (he did just get his only hopes of companionship slaughtered, so it was an understandable reaction), but ultimately decided to honor his promise to you.
Within the month, you found yourself settled in a remote village in Eastern Europe, where the weather was pleasant and joy abundant with the easy-going townsfolk. A simple life full of freedom to choose who you wished to be, and you would not have had it any other way.
Sometimes, through the corner of your eyes, you would see a hulking shape between the shadows, but it quickly vanished every time you try to call out to him. Still, you sometimes left out fresh fruit or hand-crafted figurines for your protector in the shadows, and smile when it disappeared the next day, with a wild flower in its place as a gift exchanged to you.
You live out your life happy and content, cherishing the bonds you forged along the way, forever cherished by the one being who was moved by a touch of kindness.
-END-
<If you chose to go with Adam>
“I wish to be free… together, with you, if you would allow me.”
The more you thought about it, the more this seemed to be the answer your heart craved. Adam had been nothing but loyal and gentle to you during your time together, and had taken time and effort to see and hear the real you, not blindly languish in the ideals perpetuated by a society that wished you were your dead father. Over time, you have grown to respect him, then befriend him, and finally, love him.
Yes indeed, you had fallen for the Creature just as much as he had fallen for you, for how could you not love such a gentle soul who saw nothing but the good in you. Adam’s confessions of true love had moved you, and you were willing to give him another chance, this time on your own accord (he clearly regretted the kidnapping and you yourself were curious to see what a relationship built on equal grounds would look like).
As soon as the words left your mouth, Adam positively beamed; for all his talk about how you were the light, your new forever-companion certainly looked like he would light the whole forest on fire with his eyes alone.
“Then let us make haste, beloved. Let us find paradise.”
And with that, your new life began. It was not a glorious life, nor was it a comfortable one, having to forage your own food and learn how to survive alongside the wildlife. But at the end of the day, you would not have had it any other way.
Adam became a devoted husband and life-companion, ensuring that all your needs were met, indulging in long literary and philosophical discussions as you once did on the Alps. In the end, you were with someone who loved you for you, who saw the light in being you when nobody else had, and you were eternally proud of having turned Frankenstein’s monster into your beloved husband. Truly, a touch of kindness goes a long way.
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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 7
cw: reincarnation, isekai, isolation, mild stockholm syndrome (reader misses the Creature who kidnapped them), misogyny, queerphobia, 18th century European behavior, reader has a given name but does not identify to it (treat it as an alias)
Disclaimer: the following is based off of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the book, and not its adaptations. Lines written in red are for fem readers, lines written in blue are for masc readers, and lines written in purple are for gender neutral readers. Please follow these distinctions and read what is most comfortable for you.
It has been three weeks since Victor “rescued” you from Adam; you would be more grateful for your friend’s intervention, had he not also locked you away in isolation from the rest of the world. Really, you would think that the Frankensteins were ashamed of you with how they kept you locked within their manor at all times of the day; at least with Adam you had company, here everyone avoids you like you had concocted a deadly disease.
Victor’s every interaction with you is filled with paranoia, always checking your room to see if his damned creation is lurking in the shadows ready to seize you up at any given chance. Whenever you meet his eyes, your old friend does his best to avoid them out of guilt, your very existence a reminder of how he had failed as a person both for allowing the Creature to take you and for making such a being in the first place. Whenever you tried to talk to him, to assure him that Adam had been more of a friend than a frightening monster, the eldest Frankenstein simply refused to hear you out; Victor was dead set on believing that no good could ever come from his forsaken experiment, dismissing your worries as a coping mechanism.
“The human mind is a fragile thing, so easily frightened into delirium. Fear not my good friend, soon you shall return to a sound state of mind.”
Such was the mantra Victor Frankenstein would repeat to you, and after a week of trying to hold an actual conversation, you decided to just save your energy and not bother with changing the mind of someone who would never change his mind.
The rest of the Frankenstein household were no different, seemingly walking on eggshells whenever you were within their vicinity. Elizabeth and Justine fretted over your well-being like overbearing sisters, treating you as if you were a porcelain doll that were to break should even the slightest bit of discomfort arise. The patriarch of the household would not do much other than assure you that you were under the family’s protection, and Victor’s younger brothers would simply parrot their father at your every attempt at finding companionship with the young ones, almost as if they were afraid of setting you off by saying the wrong thing. You knew everyone meant well by it, for they were under the assumption that you had been traumatized from your time with Adam, thus were doing everything in their power to make you feel safe and welcome. Yet you could not help but feel smothered, as if you were a bird in a cage.
Then there was also the matter of your womanhood being revealed; the men of the household were horrified that they had been "inappropriate" with a woman by having slept in the same room as you time and time again. Honestly it was somewhat hilarious watching over half the members of the household stumbling over their words and muttering their “deepest apologies” for having disrespected a noble young maiden. Sadly, that is where the fun ended. The Frankensteins were extra convinced of your “frail mental state”, since it was within their belief system that women were much more fragile creatures than men, thus your arguments for Adam were often dismissed as “female hysteria”.
Truthfully you expected to have more freedom than this, as you had proven yourself to be a capable young man in an era where men were expected to be strong in both mind and body, thus were not necessarily given time to heal from any trauma. However Victor insisted that even the strongest of men would have their minds irreversibly broken from spending so long in an abhorrent creature’s grasp, thus you were sequestered within the household as if you had broken a leg.
Despite proving to be of sound mind time and time again by demonstrating an acute awareness of your situation, Victor insisted that your brain needed further examination; he claimed that even the strongest of men would have their minds irreversibly broken from spending so long in an abhorrent creature’s grasp. Your refusal to adhere to the gender binary was used as further evidence against your mental stability (you kind of expected that given the time period, but it still hurt), and thus you were sequestered as if you were a patient in a mental asylum.
Truthfully, you much preferred when you were within the company of Adam; at least he had provided you with sufficient mental stimulation and treated you like an actual person rather than a distressed patient or a case study.
Your mind drifted to the last conversation you had with the Creature; once again, Victor Frankenstein had frantically dragged you away from his distraught creation, and Adam had responded with a howl of rage.
“You dare take my salvation away from me? Mark my word, Frankenstein, I will find my angel if it is the last thing I do! You will not rob me of warmth any longer!”
Those were the words he had screamed over the howling wind, as he had blindly stumbled towards your direction; Victor had temporarily stunned his estranged creation with a new concoction of his, using his sudden ambush of your cabin as an opening to throw small vials of questionable liquids straight into Adam’s eyes before pulling you towards him and out into the open (and through sheer dumb luck your friend’s half-baked plan of an ambush rescue actually worked). Yet as you were dragged towards Clerval and an awaiting group of townsmen eager to get you far away from Adam, you could have sworn you heard him speak a quiet promise to you.
“Wait for me. I will come for you.”
Those words… those few words stuck with you through all this time, both as a grim reminder that there was an enraged abomination hellbent on getting you back, and also as a twisted form of comfort.
For you see, as soon as you had been re-acquainted with society, you had become the most sought after damsel in distress for the town’s bachelors. News of your true name and identity had spread like wildfire; the daughter of the incredibly wealthy Evan Hartman, sole heiress to her late father’s fortune was truly an impressive catch for young men looking for ways to advance in society. There was not a day that went by where you would not receive at least one letter from a man expressing their condolence at your situation, followed by a poorly disguised attempt at courting you by taking advantage of your supposed vulnerability.
To make matters worse, the Frankensteins absolutely encouraged this behavior from the townsmen, claiming that having a reliable husband to look after you and protect you from the Creature would do you much good. Elizabeth, ever the romantic, would coo at the idea of a dashing youth serving as your knight in shining armor against Victor’s amalgamation, and Justine would encourage you to seek prospects as a means of moving forward in your life and re-integrating into society.
Yet you did not wish to become the wife of some man who would only see you as an asset; you did not wish to play the part of a dutiful wife of the 18th century. For years your father had forced you to perfect the mask of Evan Hartman Jr., and you refused to put on another mask and subdue your true self for the sake of fitting in with society, now that Adam had given you a taste of a life where you could simply be you and nothing more.
For you see, as soon as you had been re-acquainted with society, you had become the topic of furious discussion. News of your true name and identity had spread like wildfire, and the men who served as your business associates were divided on whether you deserved the same recognition as your father, now that you no longer carried his name; while your closest and most loyal men would argue that you were still you regardless of which name you chose to call yourself, others, those much more loyal to your father’s company and image, were quick to point out that they were expecting business dealings with an Evan Hartman and no other.
Truthfully, you were expecting something like this to happen: the man your father had made you was so different and the man you were that you would not blame people for being disappointed upon meeting the latter, especially if they had expected a carbon copy of your late father. But it still hurt that people would only see and judge you by a persona you were forced to adopt by the hands of another, dismissing the real you as nothing but a disappointment who would never live up to his father’s legacy.
Yet you did not wish to take the mantle of a strict businessman once more. For years your father had forced you to perfect the mask of Evan Hartman Jr., and you refused to put on another mask and subdue your true self for the sake of fitting in with society, now that Adam had given you a taste of a life where you could simply be you and nothing more.
For you see, as soon as you had been re-acquainted with society, you had become the topic of furious discussion. News of your true name and identity had spread like wildfire, and people were quick to judge you for standing out from the crowd. Your very existence served to challenge what was considered normal in their society, and thus you were treated as an anomaly rather than a fellow human; many, like Victor, were quick to conclude that the incident with the Creature had left you traumatised, thus had “confused” you into acting out against what was socially acceptable.
Truthfully, you were expecting something like this to happen: 18th century European society was not as forgiving or diverse as the modern era in which you had reincarnated from. Still, it hurt that you were being seen as an Other and forced into a shattering realisation that you would have to mask your true identity for as long as you live, if you ever wished becoming as respected and successful as you once were as Evan Hartman.
Yet you did not wish to hide behind a false persona any more. For years your father had forced you to perfect the mask of Evan Hartman Jr., and you refused to put on another mask and subdue your true self for the sake of fitting in with society, now that Adam had given you a taste of a life where you could simply be you and nothing more.
As time went by, it became painfully obvious to you that you were suffering: you were lonely and isolated in a ward someone else called home, forced into a preformative role once more when you had been given a taste of freedom. You wondered if this was what Adam felt like during his time alone, surrounded by people who are so similar yet so different, forced to hide yourself when you know that you can be so much more.
‘Perhaps that is why he chose me’, you thought, ‘for he saw through my mask and sensed kinship within me.’
It is then that you realised something. If Adam had been gifted a touch of kindness from you, then you had been gifted a touch of understanding. Maybe it was Stockholm syndrome, or maybe you had started feeling something for the Creature who saw you as his equal, but you were starting to miss the company of your special friend. The more time you spent alone in your room, locked and secluded from the outside world, the more you began wishing for his company.
You were lonely. And you wanted someone who understood.
Little did you know that your wish for a reunion would be granted sooner than you would think, for Victor Frankenstein had just received an ultimatum from his creation: either return you to him, or he would rob him of all the warmth in the world as he had robbed his.
If you enjoy my writing, please consider buying me a Ko-fi.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
cw: reincarnation, isekai, kidnapping, borderline obsession, mention of corpses, reader has a given name but does not identify to it (treat it as an alias)
Disclaimer: the following is based off of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the book, and not its adaptations.
Please note: Form this part onwards, there will be moments in the story where the dialogue diverges depending on the reader's gender. Lines written in red are for fem readers, lines written in blue are for masc readers, and lines written in purple are for gender neutral readers. Please follow these distinctions and read what is most comfortable for you. Thank you.
@23trendy @superlegend216
It had been nearly thirty minutes now. Thirty minutes since you had asked your friend's estranged ‘son’ what his name was. Honestly, if you knew that it would take this much time for the Creature to settle for a name, you would have just called him ‘Adam’ and be done with it.
That was the first name that came into mind when the Creature had suggested that you name him. After all, ‘Adam Frankenstein’ was a popular name given to the Creature in various different media re-imaginings of Shelley’s novel; you had almost thought it was the Creature’s official name seen in the novel, until you read the book and realized that, while he had likened himself to the biblical Adam, the name itself was by no means canon to the source material. So naturally, your first instinct was to default to the name Adam when given the chance to name the Creature for yourself.
However, rather than taking the simple route of naming him and being done with it, you decided to ask your kidnapper-made-companion what he wanted to be called instead.
“I cannot name you, for I am neither your creator nor your keeper.”
Is what you had said to the Creature upon receiving his request that you decide what he would be called as, for Victor did not bother bestowing him the gift of his own name. He had looked at you as if you had kicked him in the ribs at that.
“Then am I to remain nameless? Cursed to wear nothing but the facade of a monster, denied even the simplest of rights?”
“No, no! What I meant by that was that you should take a name of your own choosing. If I were to give you a name, I would be doing so with the belief that you would live up to your name and I do not wish to burden you with my own expectations.”
You know first hand what it is like to be forced to live up to a name of another’s choosing; having your entire life dictated for you since before you were even born (well, reincarnated) and forced to adhere to someone else’s ideal image was a pain you were most intimately familiar with. You did not wish to become like Evan Hartman the First and you certainly did not wish for the Creature to come to resent you like you resent your late father for it.
Well, that and there was also the decency of letting a grown man choose what to call himself rather than treating him like a child by choosing it for him, but you digress.
“You have been given the freedom to choose who you wish to be now. So rather than let myself choose for you, why don’t you decide for yourself what you should be called?”
The soon-to-be-named Creature had nodded slowly at that, eyes sparkling and lips spreading impossibly wide as if your words had brought him insurmountable joy.
“Turely, you are Heaven sent! Even now, even as I hold you away from your fellow kin you do not cease to share the gift of human decency! Very well then, I shall take your advice and choose a name for myself.”
And thus, here you were. Waiting patiently as your stitched-up company mumbled to himself the various different names of famous figures, ranging from renowned historical figures, such as Numa, all the way to fictional characters of literature, such as Satan from Paradise Lost (you’re not exactly sure why he would entertain the idea of adopting the latter’s name, considering the very negative connotations, other than the fact that he related to Satan’s situation in the novel).
Finally, after what feels like an additional ten minutes, the Creature settles on a name. Beaming at you with too-perfect teeth that once belonged to a dead man (or men, you’re not sure if his teeth cavities all come from the same male corpse), your kidnapper delights in telling you of his decision.
“I have decided upon ‘Adam’, for I was made to be such to my creator, before he decided that I was much more suited for the role of the Devil.”
You could not help but internally scoff at the irony; you have spent the last forty or so minutes sitting in the freezing cold (despite the lit fireplace, your current clothes were a bit too thin for… wherever this was) just for your companion to call himself the very name you had thought of from the beginning.
“Like the first man, I too have been born the first of my kind with no link to any prior being in existence, and like him… I wish to be loved.”
The Creature, now Adam, looks directly at you as he says the last part, almost as if he is silently begging you to fulfill his desire.
You open your mouth to reply, yet all that comes out is a sneeze.
“Achoo!”
It seems as though the consequences of prolonged exposure to the cold had finally caught up to you. Adam curses under his breath, berating himself at having neglected your thin wear, and prepares to depart with the promise of getting you more suitable clothing.
Seizing the opportunity to finally be able to dress as yourself, you request that he bring warm clothes befitting a lady. Upon hearing this, Adam seems a bit perplexed.
“Forgive me, but I do not understand. Surely you would prefer clothes made for a gentleman such as yourself?”
“I am not a man Adam, I simply wear their clothing because I was forced to act as my father’s son from the moment of my birth, for he could not bear the idea of having his daughter marry a cousin and hand over her inheritance for him to control; my father was a greedy man whose worst nightmare was having to share wealth with those outside of his immediate family. In the same vein, Evan Hartman is not my true name, but merely a name I was forced to carry on by my father. I am (Y/N) (L/N), and I would prefer it if you called me (Y/N), not Evan.”
“Then, (Y/N), I shall provide you with the clothes that you desire. I will be back before the sun rises.”
And with that, your kidnapper and companion departs into the night (you didn’t realise it had gotten this dark already).
You request that he bring warm men's clothes that are in your style. Adam nods and begins to depart, before you decide to call out again.
“You have told me your name, so let me tell you mine.”
“There is no need, for I already know who you are, Evan Hartman.”
“No, that is not who I am; that is simply who my father wished me to be. I am (Y/N) (L/N) so please, call me (Y/N).”
“As you wish, (Y/N). I will be back before the sun rises.”
And with that, your kidnapper and companion departs into the night (you didn’t realise it had gotten this dark already).
Seizing the opportunity to finally be able to dress as yourself, you request that he bring warm clothes for both men and women. Upon hearing this, Adam seems a bit perplexed.
“Forgive me, but I do not understand. Surely you would only prefer clothes made for a gentleman such as yourself?”
“I am not a man Adam. I am simply restricted to dressing like one because I was forced to act as my father’s son from the moment of my birth. In the same vein, Evan Hartman is not my true name, but merely a name I was forced to carry on by my father. I am (Y/N) (L/N), and I would prefer it if you called me (Y/N), not Evan.”
“Then, (Y/N), I shall provide you with the clothes that you desire. I will be back before the sun rises.”
And with that, your kidnapper and companion departs into the night (you didn’t realise it had gotten this dark already).
While Adam is gone, you cannot help but contemplate about your current situation, and what course of action you should take, now that the plot of the original novel has been altered.
On one hand, you could not help but hold a sense of fondness for the Creature. Despite having undoubtedly experienced hardships at the hands of humanity, Adam was willing to trust you, a human, unconditionally to the point where he saw you as his salvation. If he was willing to give you a chance based on one brief interaction of compassion regardless of everything he had endured at the hands of your kind, you had no doubt that he had the capacity to forgive and feel love towards humanity, under the right circumstances.
Yet at the same time, you were also weary of him. Not only did he kidnap you, but you were also burdened with the knowledge that, should you misstep, it could lead to catastrophe. Adam was highly emotionally dependent on you, and with how volatile he was in the novel, and is, you have no doubt that the currently docile creature would go straight back to embracing his villain arc like he was before you came into the picture, should you mess this up in any way, shape, or form. Just because Adam was now focused on your being did not guarantee that he would not go back to enacting his revenge on the Frankenstein bloodline, and one wrong move from you might lead to him feeling outcasted from the one person he thought would save him, thus resulting in you becoming a target for his rage as well.
For now, you decide that the best course of action would be to continue to treat Adam with kindness, both for your sake and for the sake of preventing the events of the novel coming to pass. You remember the Creature outright telling Victor Frankenstein in the novel that he would be willing to spare the human race if one person had shown him benevolence, out of respect for that one being. You hoped that by being his friend and showing him that benevolence, the pale giant would make good on the promises he had made to his creator in a parallel universe where you did not exist.
As your thoughts drifted to Victor, you could not help but worry for your friend, who would have surely heard about your kidnapping by now and be ridden with guilt for what his creation had done.
And you were not wrong.
Back at the Frankenstein estate, your childhood friend was preparing for a journey into the snowy Alps, the location where you were being held, as you would later come to find out, in search of retribution of his own.
If you enjoy my writing, please consider buying me a Ko-fi.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
cw: reincarnation, isekai, kidnapping, isolation, obsessive tendancies, mild stockholm syndrome, mention of corpses, reader has a given name but does not identify to it (treat it as an alias)
Disclaimer: the following is based off of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the book, and not its adaptations. Lines written in red are for fem readers, lines written in blue are for masc readers, and lines written in purple are for gender neutral readers. Please follow these distinctions and read what is most comfortable for you.
@23trendy @superlegend216 @agustdeeyaa
Ever since the news of your kidnapping reached him, Victor Frankenstein was in shambles. He knew exactly what, or rather, who, was to blame for your sudden disappearance, for the descriptions of the perpetrator William and the townspeople given by the townspeople had matched his accursed creation perfectly.
‘Cursed fiend! And cursed be my own hands that brought forth that abominable creation!’
Thought the scientist, riddled with guilt at having caused the kidnapping of one whom he considered family. He mourned for you, for you may as well have been dead in his eyes; for Victor could not comprehend a being of such hideous fashion acting as anything but in accordance to his looks.
And it was not just Victor who feared for your fate. The whole Frankenstein household was in utter devastation after William gave his tearful account, before breaking down half-way at the trauma of having witnessed the kidnapping of one who he considered an older sibling. Poor Elizabeth fainted at the news, and the ever-faithful Justine was left consoling her friend and future mistress of the household for a full day. The Frankenstein patriarch, who had promised your father that he would look after you as his own child on the former’s deathbed, fell ill with worry, and his youngest sons huddled together to cry their eyes out until exhaustion had taken a hold of their frail bodies.
Seeing the state the actions of his creation had left his family in, a newfound wave of guilt washed over Victor. Not only had his actions endangered you, but had also caused so much grief to his own family as well. Thus the scientist was left to wallow in his own miseries and self-loathing, continually berating himself for his cowardice at not having culled the Creature before, when he had first deemed his experiment both a failure and a mockery at all life.
For three days Victor had barricaded himself in his room, unable to face the outside world out of fear at facing the consequences of his actions, tormenting himself with hypotheses and what-ifs. It was not until the fourth day of your disappearance, when Henry Clerval had shown up on his doorstep, demanding to see his friend, that Victor Frankenstein left the burrows of his own room.
Ever the good friend, Clerval’s presence and words of comfort were enough to drag Victor out of his own misery, as they once did when he had run into his old friend at Ingolstadt, confiding in him after experiencing an episode of mania at having witnessed his Creature move (while you were busy digging in the bushes at hopes of catching the fleeing Creature, Victor had gone to Henry to vent his sorrows, just like he did in the novel). With newfound vigor, the young scientist swore that he would find you, or whatever remained of you, as retribution for his sins against humanity.
—
While Victor cycled through the stages of grief, you yourself cycled through books upon books of literature with your distinguished companion. Much like how he was in the novel, Adam had an acquired taste for various works of philosophy and literature, and you often found yourself debating the themes of whatever the Creature was fixated on at the moment.
You did not mind the discussions all too much, considering that it reminded you of discussions you used to have in college in your previous life, and were coming to enjoy your daily talks of philosophy with Adam. Perhaps it was the loneliness of being isolated from society, but having someone to talk to about your shared interest in literature was turning out to be the highlight of your day.
Indeed, your day to day life turned out to be surprisingly lacklustre, despite having been kidnapped by and forced to live with a giant man made up of stitched-together corpses. Your daily routine consisted of waking up, having an awkward breakfast with Adam staring at your from across the table (how he managed to find furniture in the middle of nowhere still baffles you), engage in brief conversations about anything that catches your eye in hopes of making your shared breakfast any less intense for you, and Adam leaving to do who-knows-what until he would return in the evening for your daily literature talk.
The first time Adam left you alone, you went about exploring your surroundings. You had done this in hopes that, should the worst come to pass, you would be familiar with a route which you could take to escape as far away from your new home as quickly as possible. Yet that expedition amounted to nothing but the realisation that you were truly located in the middle of nowhere, with no connecting roads leading to any civilization whatsoever (you briefly wondered if this was where the Creature of Shelley’s novel had planned to go with his bride, should Victor have held up on his promised and made her). Upon Adam’s return that day, you risked evoking his ire at thinking you were planning to leave him by asking how far he had taken you from Geneva.
“Why does it matter where I have taken you? You are here now; your old life is all but a figment of memory. Why does it matter how far you have traveled from your former home?”
“Because I grow sentimental, Adam. I… wish to visit my old home some time.”
As expected, Adam bristled at the implication that you would want to leave. With a glint in his eyes both equally mad and desperate, he invoked your reasoning for wanting to go back.
“Have I not provided you with warmth, companionship, and a home to call our own? Do you not find my devotion satisfying? Do you not find my company satisfying?”
“I do enjoy your company! It is just in human nature to seek nostalgia!”
Thankfully, Adam had accepted that explanation, his demeanor morphing back into that of a docile bear - relaxed with an ever-present sense of danger lingering to him.
“So long as you swear not to flee, I will sate your curiosity.”
“I swear it!”
And with that, you managed to learn of the fact that you were located deep within the Alps from a beaming Adam. More specifically, you were located inside a hut on Montanvert, the very same location Victor Frankenstein had found himself retreating to after Willaim’s death in the novel; the irony of the situation was not lost to you in the slightest, and you sincerely hoped that this coincidence would not lead to something in the future (as you would later come to find out, you were wrong - so very wrong).
After that conversation, Adam started to ask you for things to bring back on his excursions; you assumed that the fear of being abandoned by the only being who could call him friend got to him after you expressed some desire to leave, resulting in him trying to gain your favor through trinkets in hopes that you would reconsider leaving. At first, you denied his request, insisting that you were fine with what you had out of concern that he might risk confrontations with human settlements while getting you some little trinket. However, both the intense sense of boredom from your isolation and Adam’s dejected look at each refusal had worn you down, and you had requested some literature on a whim one day.
You had thought that he would bring a used book or two, either lost or thrown away by some aristocrat who had come on holiday to the mountains. What greeted you instead was an entire bag of books, with Adam proudly proclaiming that he had found a group of boys attempting to burn their books at the bottom of the mountain, presumably in an act of childish rebellion, and brought the goods back after scaring off their owners.
And thus you found yourself with entertainment and a new hobby in the form of engaging in discussions of literature with a corpse-man.
As these discussions continued, you found yourself gradually gravitating towards Adam’s presence. The debates reminded you so much of your life before you were forced to wear the mantle of Evan Hartman, when you could undoubtedly be yourself, that they brought you to a happy place.
Not only that, but Frankenstein’s monster, despite that alias, had treated you with nothing but genuine respect. Many times, your father had placed hard expectations on you, always expecting you to have dinner with him and berating you if you were but a minute late. Many times your ‘fellow businessmen’ had ridiculed you when you expressed interest in matters other than finance, especially in fictional literature, claiming that books did not matter in the makings of a good merchant. Adam did not do such things.
Not once did he call you by the name Evan, respecting your wishes to be addressed by your true name, and not once did he burden you with expectations on what he wishes you were doing during the time he was out - despite it becoming a routine, Adam always asked if you wished to discuss literature with him, rather than expecting it as his given right. Whenever you expressed enthusiasm towards a certain topic of literature, he himself would get excited and share his thoughts with you, leading to the two of you engaging in deep conversations well into the night.
For the first time since you reincarnated, Adam made you feel appreciated as yourself again. And so, you decided to thank him for it.
“You have allowed me to be the woman that I always was. And for that I am grateful.”
“You have allowed me to be the man that I always was. And for that I am grateful.”
“You have allowed me to be the person that I always was. And for that I am grateful.”
Adam grins at that, before catching himself and morphing it into an expression of gratitude and sorrow.
“Do not waste your gratitude on a wretch such as I. I am your jailer; I am your monster.”
“And yet you have treated me with more kindness than some of the most renowned men I have met in my life. So for that, I thank you.”
“...”
Adam said nothing; whether he was overwhelmed by receiving thanks for the first time in his existence or whether the guilt at having kidnapped and isolated you when you had been nothing but kind had caught up to him, you did not know.
What you did know was that your words had made a profound impact on Adam, much like your small gesture of kindness back when you first met him. And just like that time, things were about to change because of it.
