About Series: He’ll fall for you the way a child learns warmth. You’ll fall for him the way an artist falls for a muse. It starts as admiration. Then fascination. Then something that terrifies you both when you finally recognize it.
Pairing(s): The Creature/Adam Frankenstein x Fem!Frankenstein twin sister! painter reader.
Pairing(s): The Creature/Adam Frankenstein x Fem!Frankenstein twin sister! painter reader.
Warning(s): MDNI!! Slowburn. Really HEAVYYYY yearning from both parties lol. Some descriptions of gore and abuse, disturbing imagery, later chapters will contain smut, a problematic and emotionally manipulative sibling relationship, Victor is weirdly attracted to his sister…
Word Count: 2.7k
Author’s Note: GUYSSSS IM ALIVE!! I had accidentally taken a very long break without meaning to due to some unforeseen circumstances LOL. But be assured that I am back and ready for action. Also wuthering heights anyone??👀 might need to write a series for that too hehe.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
A couple months had passed, though time no longer moves the way it once did.
It drifts instead, marked by the way pain settles into the bones and becomes familiar, by the gradual understanding that no one is coming to look for you and that this quiet, this hiding, is not temporary but chosen.
You wake most mornings before the light does.
The place Adam has found is far from roads and villages, tucked into a cleft of stone and pine where the world would seem reluctant to intrude. It’s not a home in the way houses once were, but it is shelter. Stone walls darkened with age, a partial roof patched with scavenged timber, the lingering scent of earth and cold water. Snow gathers outside in soft drifts, muffling the forest until even the wind feels hesitant.
You lie still for a moment, listening.
Adam is already awake.
You can tell by the way the fire crackles, carefully tended, never allowed to burn too high. He is always awake before you, always vigilant, as though sleep itself is a luxury he no longer trusts.
Your left shoulder throbs faintly as you shift.
The wound has closed, an ugly, pink scar where the bullet tore through flesh and muscle but healing has not returned what was taken. Your fingers curl slowly, clumsily, as if reluctant to obey you, and the weakness sends a sharp, familiar ache through your chest. Painting, when you try, is different now. Lines tremble. Pressure is uneven. You have had to relearn your own hand.
Adam notices immediately when you move.
“You are awake,” he says quietly, from across the room.
“Yes,” you answer, voice rough with sleep. “I hope I didn’t disturb you.”
He turns then, and the sight of him still steals something from your breath.
He has changed in the past month, not dramatically, but noticeably. There is more certainty in the way he holds himself now, more confidence in his movements, as though surviving has taught him something essential. His hair has grown longer, falling past his shoulders; his coat bears the marks of weather and travel. He looks less like something lost and more like something that has chosen where to be.
“I do not sleep deeply,” he admits. “But no, you did not disturb me.”
You sit up slowly, bracing yourself with your good arm, and he is at your side before you even ask, steadying you with a hand at your back. His touch is careful, practiced now, but it lingers just long enough to make your heart stutter before he withdraws.
“You should rest longer,” he says. “Your arm-”
“I know,” you interrupt gently. “But please, I’m not made of glass.”
His mouth twitches, almost a smile. “You are made of something far more resilient.”
You snort softly, then wince as the movement pulls at your shoulder. “If Victor could hear you say that, he’d accuse you of lying to spare my feelings.”
The name hangs between you.
Adam stills.
For a moment, you think he will say nothing, but then he exhales slowly. “He would accuse me of far worse than that,” he says. “And perhaps he already has.”
You swallow. “Do you think he’s coming?”
“Yes.” Adam answers without hesitation.
The certainty in his voice sends a chill through you, but it is not fear that tightens your chest, it’s something closer to resolve.
“It doesn’t matter,” you say. “Not like it used to.”
He looks at you then, really looks, his gaze searching your face as though committing it to memory again. “It matters to me,” he says quietly. “Because if he finds us, I will not let him take you.”
“I don’t belong to him,” you reply, sharper than you intend.
“I know,” Adam says immediately. “I did not mean-” He stops, collecting himself. “I mean that I will defend you. With my life, if I must.”
The intensity of it makes your throat tighten.
You look away first.
The days pass like this, measured, restrained, filled with unspoken things. You help where you can, despite your arm, despite Adam’s frequent insistence that you should not. You sketch when the pain allows it, awkwardly, clumsily, learning to guide the pencil with patience rather than force. Adam watches you when he thinks you are not looking, fascinated by the way you persist even when your arm pains you.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Sometimes, when frustration overwhelms you, you snap.
“Stop hovering,” you tell him one afternoon, teeth clenched as your grip slips again. “I’m not going to break.”
He raises his hands in surrender, but there is something amused in his eyes. “I would never presume you fragile,” he says. “Only… precious.”
You freeze.
He seems to realize what he has said at the same moment you do.
Silence stretches.
“I didn’t-” Adam begins, then stops, visibly recalibrating. “That was not meant to upset you.”
You laugh softly, though your pulse is racing. “It didn’t,” you say. “It surprised me.”
He nods once, accepting that, but something has shifted. The space between you feels changed now, every glance heavier, every accidental brush of skin lingering too long to be accidental at all.
At night, when the cold creeps deeper into the stone and the fire burns low, you lie awake listening to his breathing across the room, acutely aware of the distance between you. Not far enough to feel safe, not close enough to feel resolved.
One evening, you finally speak.
“Adam,” you say softly into the dark.
“Yes?”
“Do you ever think about what comes after this?” you ask. “After hiding.”
He is quiet for a while.
“I think about it constantly,” he admits. “But I do not know how to imagine a future that has never been permitted to me.”
You turn your head, watching the faint shine of his eye in the firelight. “You’re allowed to imagine it now.”
He looks back at you. “Only because you are here.”
Your heart stumbles.
“I don’t regret it,” you say suddenly. “Leaving. Choosing this.”
“I know,” he replies. “You do not carry regret the way Victor does.”
You lower the sketchbook, resting it against your lap. “Do you ever wish you had left me behind?” you ask quietly. “When you carried me away. When you realized how much danger I’d be in because of you.”
Adam turns to you sharply. “Never.”
The force of it startles you.
“I wish,” he says, more softly now, “that the world had not demanded so much of you for showing kindness. But I do not wish you gone. I do not wish you safe without me.”
You swallow. “That doesn’t sound very selfless.”
“No,” he agrees. “It is not.”
That hangs between you, confession raw and heavy.
“I am selfish where you are concerned,” Adam continues. “I think I always have been. I returned for you not because it was right, but because the thought of a world in which you existed beyond my reach was unbearable.”
Your heart stutters painfully. “Adam…”
He reaches out then, finally, his hand hovering near your injured arm before settling gently over your good one instead. The touch is warm, grounding.
“I do not know what this is yet,” he says. “Only that when you are in pain, I feel it. When you create, I feel… something like pride. As though your persistence is proof that I was not wrong to believe in you.”
You laugh softly, tears burning at the corners of your eyes. “You believed in me long before I believed in myself.”
“That is because I saw you first as you are,” he replies. “Not as a role. Not as a duty. Not as someone’s sister or someone’s expectation.”
Your voice trembles. “And what am I, then?”
He looks at you like the answer is obvious. Like it has always been obvious.
“You are the first person who ever looked at me and saw beauty without condition,” Adam says. “You are the one who taught me that difference does not mean defect. You are… my beginning.”
Silence follows.
You set the sketchbook aside with care, your pulse loud in your ears. “I don’t know what we’re becoming,” you confess. “I only know that when I imagine the future now, you’re there. And that scares me.”
Adam’s thumb brushes slowly over your knuckles. “Why?”
“Because if Victor finds us,” you say, “he will call this a betrayal. He will say I chose wrong.”
Adam’s expression hardens briefly at the mention of Victor, then softens again when he looks back at you. “You chose yourself,” he says. “And you chose me. Those are not sins.”
You lean closer without realizing it, drawn in by the gravity he spoke of earlier. “Promise me something,” you whisper.
“Anything.”
“If the world comes for us,” you say, voice steady despite the fear curling beneath it, “we don’t let it decide who we are.”
Adam nods once. “We won’t.”
You rest your forehead briefly against his shoulder, exhaustion washing over you, and he stills completely, allowing the contact as though it is something precious.
Outside, the forest remains quiet, snow falling softly enough to erase footprints and intentions alike.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
A couple months have passed, and the estate does not recover from your absence.
It does not learn to breathe without you.
Victor notices it in the smallest, most insidious ways. The silence that lingers too long in the hallways, the way doors remain closed because no one expects them to open anymore, the absence of your footsteps at hours he once took for granted. Even the servants move differently, their voices hushed as though the walls themselves might shatter if they speak too loudly of what has been lost.
Or more so what has been done. Victor does not correct them anymore. He lets them believe you are dead.
It is easier that way. Cleaner. A tragedy can be mourned, dressed in black, tucked away into memory with enough time. But the truth- the truth is restless. The truth breathes. The truth demands to be chased.
And Victor knows, with a certainty that has only sharpened over the weeks, that you are not dead. You cannot be.
He replays the moment constantly, dissecting it with the same precision he once used in his work, stripping it down to its smallest components. The angle of the shot. The distance. The way your body fell- no, not fell, slumped. The sound you made. The fact that you were still conscious when that thing carried you away.
Alive. Alive, and taken.
Victor stands now at the edge of the estate grounds, the cold biting through his coat, his breath visible in the morning air. Snow stretches out before him, untouched in places, disturbed in others where servants have passed or animals have wandered too close. But beyond that, beyond the predictable patterns of daily life there are traces.
Faint. But not invisible.
He crouches slowly, his prosthetic leg stiff but steady, the metal joint clicking faintly as he lowers himself. His gloved fingers brush over the surface of the snow, tracing a shallow depression that might be dismissed by anyone else as wind or coincidence.
But Victor is not anyone else.
“This is where you went,” he murmurs.
The track is old, weeks, softened by snowfall, blurred at the edges. But it is there. A disruption in the natural order. A path that does not belong to animal or servant.
A path that leads away.
He straightens, his jaw tightening as something dark settles deeper into his chest.
“You didn’t vanish,” he says quietly. “You left.”
The distinction matters.
Because if you left, then you can be found.
Victor turns back toward the estate, his gaze sweeping over the towering structure that once felt like the center of everything, of family, of legacy, of control. Now it feels hollow, a shell echoing with things unsaid, with arguments unfinished, with your absence carved into every room like a wound that refuses to close.
William is gone and so is Elizabeth. Vienna. The word tastes like abandonment.
Victor does not write to them.
He does not explain himself, does not attempt to mend what has broken. There is no time for that. No space for remorse that does not serve a purpose. Every thought, every breath, is directed outward toward you, toward the creature, toward the undeniable truth that the two of you exist somewhere beyond his reach.
For now.
He returns inside, moving with a restless energy that has replaced sleep, replaced routine, replaced anything resembling peace. His study is no longer a place of quiet thought but of frantic motion. Maps scattered across the desk, notes scribbled in margins, routes drawn and redrawn until the paper threatens to tear beneath the pressure of his pen.
He studies them again.
Forests. Abandoned structures. Old roads long since fallen out of use. Places where something unwanted might hide. Places where he might hide.
“You would seek isolation,” Victor mutters, pacing. “You would avoid villages, avoid eyes, avoid anything that might expose you.”
His hand tightens around the edge of the desk.
“And she would follow you.”
The words come out sharper than he intends.
Not because he doubts it, no, he knows you would. He saw it in the way you stood before him, in the way you chose to shield the creature instead of stepping aside.
You chose him.
Victor exhales slowly, forcing the thought into a shape he can tolerate.
“She was injured,” he says, as though correcting a flawed equation. “She was not thinking clearly. She was… influenced.”
He nods once, as if that settles it.
“Yes,” he continues. “That is all this is. Influence. Confusion. She does not understand what she has done.”
The lie is almost convincing.
Almost.
Because beneath it, quieter but far more persistent, is the memory of your voice, steady, certain, unafraid.
You knew exactly what you were doing.
Victor’s grip tightens until his knuckles ache.
“No,” he says aloud, harsher now. “No. You would not leave me. Not willingly.”
The room feels smaller suddenly, the walls pressing in, the air too thin to breathe properly. He moves again, unable to remain still, his thoughts spiraling and sharpening all at once.
“If you left,” he continues, pacing faster now, “then it was because he made you believe you had no other choice. He turned you against me. He twisted your kindness into something-”
His voice breaks off. Silence crashes down around him. Victor stops. Slowly, deliberately, he turns his head toward the window.
Outside, beyond the immediate grounds, the forest stretches dark and endless, its depths obscured by distance and shadow. And there, just at the edge of visibility something catches his eye.
Another disturbance. Another mark. Not random. Not natural.
A path leading away from the estate. Victor’s breath stills then quickens.
“You were here,” he whispers.
Not just once but more than once.
The realization strikes him with electrifying clarity, the tracks are not from a single escape, not from a frantic flight into the unknown.
“You didn’t just run,” he says, a slow, almost incredulous smile pulling at his lips. “You stayed nearby.”
Hope. Twisted, dangerous, and intoxicating floods his chest.
“You stayed within reach.”
His mind races now, connecting fragments, building patterns where before there had only been chaos. The creature would not take you far if you were injured. It would seek shelter first. Safety. Seclusion. Somewhere close enough to monitor, to protect, to keep you.
Victor straightens, his posture sharpening with purpose.
“I am close,” he says.
The words are not a guess. They are a promise.
He moves quickly now, gathering what he needs with practiced efficiency. Coat, tools, notes, anything that might aid him in tracking, in finding, in reclaiming what has been taken from him. The estate fades into the background, irrelevant now, nothing more than a starting point for what comes next.
At the threshold, he pauses.
For just a moment.
His gaze flickers back over the empty hall, the silent rooms, the life that once existed here in fragile balance. For a fraction of a second, something like doubt threatens to surface, a truth he has refused to name.
Did you leave because of him?
Because of what he did?
Victor’s jaw tightens. The thought is crushed before it can take shape.
“No,” he says firmly, stepping out into the cold. “You were taken.”
The door closes behind him and with it, any remaining illusion that this is anything but a hunt.
Snow crunches beneath his steps as he follows the faint trail, his eyes sharp, his mind relentless, every instinct honed toward a single goal.
Pairing(s): The Creature/Adam Frankenstein x Fem!Frankenstein twin sister! painter reader.
Warning(s): MDNI!! Slowburn. Really HEAVYYYY yearning from both parties lol. Some descriptions of gore and abuse, disturbing imagery, later chapters will contain smut, a problematic and emotionally manipulative sibling relationship, Victor is weirdly attracted to his sister…
Word Count: 4.4k
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
You don’t remember leaving the estate
Not in any orderly way. Not as a sequence of events that could be laid out and examined, but as fragments stitched together by sensation rather than logic. The sharp bite of night air against your skin, the way the world rocked violently as you were lifted, the sound of your own heartbeat roaring in your ears. You remember white fabric slipping through your fingers, remember thinking distantly that it should not be red, that it was never meant to be red, and then the thought dissolves into pain so vast it becomes almost abstract.
Through it all, there was him.
Adam’s arms are firm around you, impossibly steady despite the chaos, his grip is careful and gentle as though he’s carrying something sacred rather than something fragile. Every time your body slackens, every time your breath stutters or falters, his hold tightens instantly, anchoring you to him, grounding you in the simple, undeniable fact of his presence.
“Stay with me,” he murmurs, his voice low and rough against the cold, close to your ear as he moves, “please, stay. You promised me once you would not disappear.”
“I’m here,” you try to say, though it comes out broken, barely more than air. “I’m still-”
“I know,” he interrupts quickly, urgently, as if afraid to let you finish, “I know. Just… keep speaking. Let me hear you.”
The estate vanishes behind you, swallowed by trees and shadow and falling snow. When he finally stops it’s somewhere forgotten, somewhere hidden, a half-ruined building tucked into the land like a secret never meant to be uncovered. He lowers you slowly, painfully careful, easing you down onto layers of cloth and leaves he must have gathered earlier, though you cannot imagine when.
He kneels beside you at once.
“Does it hurt?” he asks, even though the answer is written all over you.
“Yes,” you whimper honestly, forcing your eyes open to find him.
His hands hover uselessly for a moment before he presses fabric to your shoulder, his movements trembling despite his strength. “I remember how you showed me,” he says quietly, “you said pressure first. You said it mattered where the hands went.”
“It does,” you murmur, your voice fading. “You’re doing fine.”
His jaw tightens.
“I should never have left you there,” he says suddenly, fiercely, the words spilling out like something he has been holding back for months. “I should have taken you the moment you stood for me. I should have known he would hurt you.”
You shake your head weakly. “Adam… no. You gave me a choice. You always did. That mattered to me.”
At the sound of his name on your lips, his breath catches.
You see it even as your vision blurs, the way his shoulders tense, the way his expression softens into something almost unbearably tender.
“You remember,” he says quietly. “Even now.”
“Of course I remember,” you whisper. “I never forgot you. Not for a day.”
Your eyelids grow heavy despite your efforts, the pain dulling into something distant, and the last thing you hear before the world slips away is his voice, breaking as he leans close.
“Then come back to me,” Adam whispers. “Please.”
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The darkness you fall into is not frightening.
It is vast, quiet, suspended, like being held beneath deep water, where sound cannot reach and nothing is demanded of you. There are no visions waiting, no judgment, only the sensation of drifting between breaths, between choices not yet made.
You think of paint suspended in oil. Of blue spreading slowly through white. Of hands that never flinched when they touched you. You don’t hear Adam’s voice here, but you feel it, steady and insistent, like a tide pulling you gently back.
When you wake, it’s to pain and warmth and the unmistakable awareness of being watched.
Your breath hitches, a small, involuntary sound, and immediately he moves.
“You’re awake,” Adam says softly, disbelief threading through his voice as he leans closer, careful not to crowd you, “you’re awake, I can see it in your eyes.”
“Adam,” you breathe, the relief in your voice present.
He closes his eyes for a moment, as if steadying himself. “I thought I had lost you,” he admits quietly. “You were so still. I called your name and you did not answer.”
“I’m sorry,” you whisper. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
His mouth twists into something like a smile, fragile and pained. “You are allowed to scare me,” he says. “Just… not like that.”
You swallow, your throat dry. “How long was I gone?”
“Long enough for the snow to change,” he replies. “Long enough for me to believe the world had taken you back.”
You shift slightly, wincing, and he is instantly alert, adjusting the cloth at your shoulder.
“Don’t,” he says gently. “You need to rest.”
“I need to know,” you murmur, forcing yourself to meet his gaze. “What happened after.”
He hesitates. “They believe you are dead,” he says finally. “Victor. The others. They saw the blood. They did not follow us far.”
Dead.
The word settles strangely over you, heavy but not unwelcome.
“And you?” you ask quietly. “What do you believe?”
Adam studies your face for a long moment, then answers without hesitation. “I believe you chose to stay.”
You manage a faint smile. “I did.”
He is quiet for a long moment after telling you they believe you died, his gaze fixed somewhere past your shoulder as if the memory has weight, as if it is something he has been carrying alone and only now allows himself to set down.
“There is something else,” Adam says finally, and there is an unfamiliar strain in his voice, something wounded and restrained rather than furious. “Something I did not want to tell you while you were still drifting.”
You frown faintly, pain tugging at your brow as you shift just enough to look at him. “Tell me.”
He hesitates, jaw tightening, his hands flexing once in yours as though he is resisting the urge to tear something apart that is no longer there.
“When I took you from the estate,” he says slowly, carefully choosing each word as if afraid they might cut you, “when I carried you down the steps and out into the night, your brother followed as far as the steps ended.”
Your chest tightens at the mention of Victor, but you say nothing, waiting.
“He was shouting,” Adam continues, his voice roughening despite his effort to keep it steady. “Not your name. Not for help.”
Your heart sinks. “He shouted for me.”
You close your eyes briefly, a bitter breath slipping from between your teeth.
“He said,” Adam goes on, and now there is pain in his expression, naked and unguarded, “that I had killed you. That I had stolen you away and murdered you, and that he would find me and destroy me for it. He said it loudly, so that everyone would hear.”
Silence stretches thick and heavy between you. Your hand curls weakly in his.
“He said it as though it were already true,” Adam finishes quietly. “As though he needed the world to believe it.”
Anger flares through you, sharp enough to momentarily eclipse the pain in your shoulder.
“He did this to me,” you whisper, your voice trembling with fury rather than weakness, “and he still found a way to make you the monster.”
Adam looks at you then, searching your face anxiously, as though afraid this knowledge will turn you against him, as though the lie might somehow stain what you share.
“I did not want you to think-” he begins.
“I know,” you interrupt, forcing your eyes open to meet his, “I know you didn’t hurt me. I stood in front of you. I chose to. He knows that too- he just can’t live with it.”
Your breathing grows shallow, not from pain this time, but from the weight of realization settling over you.
“He needs to believe you killed me,” you say bitterly, “because if he admits the truth, then he has to live with what he did.”
Adam’s expression darkens, grief and anger twisting together. “He would rather the world hunt me,” he says, voice low, “than see you choose me over him.”
“Yes,” you reply softly, with devastating certainty. “He always would.”
For a moment, Adam says nothing. Then, very gently, he reaches out and cups your uninjured hand in his, his thumb brushing your skin in a grounding, reverent motion.
“I am sorry,” he says, not for what he has done, but for what has been done to you. “I never wanted to take your family from you.”
You tighten your fingers around his.
“They stopped being my family the moment they decided my life belonged to their fear,” you say quietly. “You didn’t take anything from me. You offered me a way out.”
His breath shudders. “And you are not angry?” he asks, almost afraid of the answer.
You look at him, really look at him, at the being who carried you bleeding into the night, who asked instead of decided, who loved you enough to let you go if you asked.
“I’m angry,” you say. “But not at you.”
Your voice softens. “I’m angry that he thinks he can rewrite my story even after he tried killing me.”
Adam nods slowly, something resolute settling into his posture.
He exhales shakily, something like relief washing over him. Then, more carefully, more deliberately, he says, “I must ask you something. And you must answer me truthfully.”
You nod. “Yes, anything.”
“If you live through this,” he begins slowly, “you cannot return to them. They will not understand what you have become. They will not forgive what you chose tonight. You would have to leave everything behind.”
You hold his gaze. “And if I don’t?” you ask.
“I will carry you back,” he says quickly, voice steady despite the pain beneath it, “I will place you where they can find you, and then I will go. You will be safe. You will be remembered.”
Your chest tightens.
“You’d leave me,” you whisper.
“Yes,” he says simply. “Because loving you does not mean owning your future.”
The silence between you is thick, fragile.
“Adam,” you say, your voice shaking not from fear but from certainty, “when you found me again, it felt like coming home to a place I didn’t know I’d been missing. I don’t want the life they’ll give me. I don’t want forgiveness that costs me myself.”
You reach for him with your uninjured arm, fingers intertwining with his own.
“I want you,” you finish softly. “And whatever life we have to build from this.”
For a moment, he cannot speak.
Then he bows his head, pressing his forehead briefly to your hand, as though accepting something holy.
“Then we leave,” Adam says, his voice low and sure. “Together.”
Adam shifts closer, careful, always careful, as though even the air around you might bruise if he moves too quickly, and when he lifts his hand to your face it trembles faintly, not from fear, but from the weight of what he is allowing himself to feel.
“Look at me,” he murmurs softly.
You do.
Your eyes meet his, unfocused but present, and for a breathless second neither of you speaks. His thumb brushes your cheek with reverent slowness, as though he is memorizing the shape of you, as though he is afraid that if he does not commit this moment to every sense he has, the world might steal it away again.
“I did not think I would ever see you like this again,” he confesses quietly. “Alive. Choosing me.”
A weak smile curves your lips. “You found me,” you whisper. “I knew you would.”
He exhales shakily, leaning closer until his forehead nearly rests against yours. “I followed the memory of you,” he says. “It was the only thing that did not abandon me.”
Your hand lifts slowly, painfully, and he stills instantly, letting you set the pace as your fingers brush his wrist, grounding him.
“Adam,” you breathe, the name a comfort on your tongue, “don’t let me go.”
“I won’t,” he promises, without hesitation. “Not now. Not ever again.”
He cups your face fully then, both hands warm and impossibly gentle, holding you as though you are something sacred rather than broken, and for a moment the pain fades beneath the simple, overwhelming truth of being wanted.
When your eyes begin to flutter closed again, exhaustion finally claiming what fear and adrenaline have kept at bay, he leans down and presses a kiss to your forehead.
A vow made without words.
“Rest,” he whispers against your skin. “I am here. When you wake, I will still be here.”
Your breath slows. Your fingers curl faintly against his sleeve.
Outside, snow continues to fall, erasing footprints, silencing the past. Somewhere behind you, the estate will mourn a death that never truly happened, burying a name while you slip quietly out of reach.
You close your eyes again, pain still present, body still broken but held, chosen, and alive. And this time, when darkness comes, you are not afraid. You are no longer alone.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Victor tells them you are dead.
He says it plainly at first, almost mechanically, as though repetition might make it real if he says it often enough, if he says it to enough guests that are willing to carry the story onward for him. A tragic accident. A moment of chaos. A wound too grave. He does not describe the blood. He does not describe the sound you made. He does not describe the way you fell.
He lets the estate do the rest.
By morning, the house is draped in black the same way it had been dressed for celebration only hours before, white cloth now a mockery rather than a promise, whispers crawling along the corridors like something alive. Servants avert their eyes when Victor passes. Guests leave early, stunned, shaken, eager to escape the gravity of a place that has devoured its own joy.
Victor locks himself in his study. He sits at the desk where he once believed himself a god and stares at his hands. They are clean. That is the problem.
He presses them together until his knuckles ache, until the bones grind faintly beneath the skin, as if pain might summon blood that is no longer there. His mind replays the moment endlessly, the way you stepped forward, the way your voice never wavered, the way you looked at him, not with fear, but with disappointment.
“She chose him,” Victor mutters aloud, pacing now, his voice sharp against the walls. “She stepped in front of it. She forced my hand.”
And yet.
There is a splinter lodged deep beneath that certainty, one he cannot dig out no matter how hard he tries. The image of you being carried away, alive, breathing, whispering.
The lie does not settle.
The knock comes sharp and unyielding. Victor freezes.
Another knock, harder this time.
“Victor,” William’s voice cuts through the door, stripped of warmth, of patience, “open the door. Now.”
Victor swallows and straightens his coat as though that might restore order, as though his appearance has not already betrayed him. He opens the door.
William stands there rigid with fury, Elizabeth beside him, her face pale and drawn, her eyes red from crying but blazing with something far more dangerous than grief.
“You told them she was dead,” Elizabeth says immediately, her voice trembling with restrained rage. “You told them all she didn’t survive.”
Victor lifts his chin defensively. “She was shot. She lost an enormous amount of blood. It was reasonable to assume-”
“Don’t.” William snaps, stepping forward into the room, slamming the door shut behind them. “Do not stand there and pretend this was confusion or tragedy or fate. You shot her.”
Victor flinches.
“It was an accident,” he insists, too quickly. “She stepped in the way. She chose-”
“She chose to stop you from murdering someone,” Elizabeth cuts in sharply, tears spilling over again. “She chose to protect a being you chained, tormented, and you punished her for it.”
Victor’s jaw tightens. “You don’t understand what that thing is.”
“We understand exactly what it is,” William says, his voice low and shaking with barely contained fury. “It’s the being who carried my sister out of this house when she was bleeding to death while you stood there frozen.”
The words land like blows.
Victor turns away, dragging a hand through his hair. “You didn’t see what I saw,” he says hoarsely. “You didn’t see the way she looked at him. Like I was already gone.”
William laughs bitterly. “Because you were.”
Silence swells between them.
Elizabeth steps closer, his voice breaking. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to her? To all of us? Do you have any idea what it feels like to watch your own brother-in-law aim a gun at his twin sister?”
Victor whirls around. “I never meant to hurt her!”
“But you did,” Elizabeth says softly, and somehow that is worse. “And now you’re lying about it.”
Victor’s breath comes shallow. “If she lives-” he stops himself.
Elizabeth’s eyes sharpen instantly. “If she lives?”
William stares at him. “You don’t know…”
Victor’s silence answers for him.
Elizabeth steps back as though struck. “You don’t know if she’s dead,” she whispers. “You told everyone she was gone because it was easier than admitting the truth.”
Victor’s composure cracks then, just slightly. “If she lives,” he says again, quieter now, more desperate, “then she has chosen exile. She has chosen him. And I-”
“And you cannot survive that,” William finishes coldly. “So you kill her again with words.”
Victor slams his fist against the desk. “I am trying to protect what remains of this family!”
Elizabeth’s voice rises, sharp and broken. “You are destroying it!”
William’s hands tremble at his sides. “You don’t get to decide who lives or dies anymore, Victor. You lost that right the moment you pulled the trigger.”
Victor’s eyes burn. “You think I don’t see her when I close my eyes?” he snaps. “You think I don’t hear her voice? You think I don’t feel it tearing me apart?”
“Then tell the truth,” Elizabeth pleads. “Tell them what you did.”
Victor laughs hollowly. “And what then? They hunt me instead of him? They tear this house apart? They erase everything I’ve built?”
William’s gaze hardens. “Everything you built was already rotten.”
The words hang there, irrevocable.
Elizabeth wipes her face, her voice steadier now. “If she is alive,” she says carefully, “and I believe she is, then I hope she never comes back here.”
Victor stiffens. “What?”
“She deserves a life that isn’t shaped by your fear,” William continues. “And if that means she leaves us behind, then so be it.”
Victor’s hands curl into fists. “You would choose that thing over your own brother?”
William meets his gaze without flinching. “I would choose her.”
Elizabeth nods. “Every time.”
Victor sinks into the chair behind him as though the room has finally given up holding him upright.
“You think she’ll forgive you?” William asks quietly. “If she lives?”
Victor doesn’t answer. Because somewhere beneath the denial, beneath the lies, beneath the story he is forcing the world to swallow, he knows the truth that terrifies him most of all. You left him.
William stands with his back half-turned, his jaw tight, his hands braced against the edge of the table as though the only thing keeping him upright is sheer force of will.
Finally, he exhales. Slow. Controlled. Final.
“We’re leaving,” William says.
Victor looks up sharply. “Leaving?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth answers before William can continue, her voice steadier than it has been all night, as though grief has burned away whatever hesitation once lived there. “Vienna. We were meant to go after the wedding anyway. We’re not delaying it now.”
Victor stares at them, disbelief flashing across his face. “You can’t be serious. Not now.”
“Now is exactly when,” William says quietly. “This house isn’t safe. Not anymore.”
Victor scoffs weakly. “You think running away will fix this?”
Elizabeth steps forward, her hands trembling but her voice unwavering. “We’re not running. We’re leaving something that refuses to be mended.”
William turns then, finally facing Victor fully, and the look in his eyes is not anger anymore, it is devastation, stripped bare.
“I don’t know if I can forgive you,” he says.
The words land softly. That somehow makes them worse.
Victor’s breath catches. “William-”
“You shot her,” William continues, his voice cracking despite his effort to keep it steady. “My sister. Your twin. You looked at her and you still pulled the trigger.”
“It was an accident-”
“NO.” William snaps, the restraint finally breaking. “An accident is a stumble. An accident is a misstep. What you did was a choice made in fear and pride, and it possibly killed the person I love most in this world.”
Elizabeth reaches for William’s hand, lacing her fingers through his, grounding him.
“If she lives,” William says, his voice lower now, raw with something dangerously close to grief, “I don’t know what I’ll say to her about you. I don’t know how to explain that her own brother did this to her.”
Victor’s composure fractures.
“She stepped in front of it,” he insists again, desperately clinging to the narrative that has kept him upright this long. “She forced me-”
William shakes his head slowly. “She showed you who you are.”
Silence swells. Elizabeth looks at Victor one last time, tears tracking silently down her cheeks. “If she is alive,” she says softly, “and if she never comes back here… I will understand why.”
Victor’s throat tightens. “You would abandon me too?”
Elizabeth doesn’t hesitate. “You abandoned her first.”
William squeezes her hand. “We leave at dawn.”
Victor stands abruptly. “You can’t just go,” he says, voice rising again, panic threading through it. “You’re my brother.”
William meets his gaze, eyes hollow. “And she was my sister.”
The words are final.
Elizabeth turns toward the door, pausing only once. “I hope she lives,” she says quietly. “And I hope wherever she is, she is loved the way she deserves to be.”
Then they are gone.
The door closes behind them with a soft, definitive sound that echoes through the study like a verdict.
Victor is left alone.
The house feels larger now, emptier, colder, every hallway a reminder of footsteps that will never return, every room a monument to the people he has driven away in the name of certainty.
Victor sinks slowly into the chair, hands shaking, the lie still clawing at his throat even as the truth presses in from all sides.
You are dead, he tells himself. You must be.
Because if you are alive, if you chose to live without him, then this ruin is not fate.
It is consequence.
He drags a hand down his face and laughs once, quietly, a sound scraped raw from somewhere too deep to be anything but bitter. They think absence will save them. They think distance will dull the truth.
It never does.
Victor rises slowly, the chair scraping softly against the floor, and crosses to the window. Outside, the grounds lie blanketed in snow, smooth and unmarred, as if nothing has happened here at all. No blood. No footprints. No proof of violence or escape.
Too clean.
He presses his palm against the cold glass.
“You’re alive,” he says aloud, testing the words, and feels something in his chest answer.
He knows it with the same certainty he once reserved for equations and experiments, the same certainty that drove him to defy death itself. You were breathing when you were taken. Your eyes were closed but you spoke. He saw the way you clutched at the Creature as though he were the only solid thing left in the world.
Dead people don’t do that. Dead people don’t choose.
Victor turns from the window, his mind already moving, already stitching together possibility and probability with the feverish precision of a man who cannot afford uncertainty. The Creature would not have left you to die, not after what you did, not after the way you stood for him. He would have hidden you. Sheltered you. Done what Victor himself failed to do.
And that thought twists sharply, painfully.
“You think you’ve taken her from me,” Victor murmurs, pacing now, hands flexing at his sides, “you think you’ve stolen something that was never yours.”
He stops suddenly, the idea striking him with blinding clarity.
No.
You didn’t vanish. You were taken.
Rescued, if one were to use kinder language. Seduced into exile by a creature who learned just enough humanity to mimic devotion, just enough tenderness to confuse gratitude with love.
Victor’s jaw tightens.
“She doesn’t belong out there,” he says sharply, as if correcting a flawed hypothesis. “She doesn’t belong in the dark with you.”
He crosses the room and flings open a drawer, rifling through it with shaking hands until he finds what he is looking for. Old notes, sketches, maps, records of abandoned structures and forgotten roads, the detritus of a mind that has never truly let go of its obsessions.
He spreads them across the desk.
The Creature is predictable, Victor tells himself. It thinks in terms of hiding, of distance, of isolation. It will take you somewhere remote. Somewhere difficult to reach. Somewhere it believes no one will follow.
Victor smiles thinly.
“They always underestimate me,” he says.
The idea that you might have chosen this, chosen Adam, chosen exile, chosen a life beyond his reach claws at him, and he shoves it aside with practiced efficiency. Choice is a luxury of clear minds, and you were wounded, frightened, vulnerable.
Influenced.
“You didn’t betray me,” he says softly, almost kindly now, as though addressing you directly across the miles already stretching between you. “You were misled. And I will correct that.”
Outside, the sunset begins to bleed slowly into the sky, deep and colorful, and Victor watches it without seeing, his thoughts already far from the estate, already following the path he believes you must have taken.
He will hunt Adam.
He will find you.
Not because he hates the Creature, though hatred simmers close to the surface, but because he knows you are alive, and the idea of you breathing somewhere beyond his control is intolerable.
“You can run,” Victor whispers to the empty room, gathering his coat, his resolve settling into place with frightening calm. “You can hide.”
His eyes burn with certainty. “But I will not stop.”
Pairing(s): The Creature/Adam Frankenstein x Fem!Frankenstein twin sister! painter reader.
Warning(s): MDNI!! Slowburn. Really HEAVYYYY yearning from both parties lol. Some descriptions of gore and abuse, disturbing imagery, later chapters will contain smut, a problematic and emotionally manipulative sibling relationship, Victor is weirdly attracted to his sister…
Word Count: 8.4k
Author's Note: This one is LONG ok ya'll... When this gets posted I'm taking a little break to focus on college finals cause they are absolutely eating me up LMAO but enjoy :)
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The estate seems alive in its preparations, yet you feel like a shadow moving through the halls. The snow presses against the windows like a quiet accusation, reminding you of what has been lost, of him. And yet, you must move among the living, for Elizabeth, for William, for Victor, and for the faint glimmer of hope that he is still out there, somewhere, waiting.
Elizabeth enters the room where you are arranging silk ribbons for the bouquets, the morning light catching the pale white threads, making them glow almost ethereally. She stops, her delicate hands resting lightly on the folds of her gown.
“y/n, you must tell me… what is it that makes these ribbons so perfect? I have watched you for hours, and yet every time I think I understand, you find some new, subtle way to turn the ordinary into… something that feels alive.”
You glance up, showing a small smile though your chest felt heavy. “It is not the ribbons, Elizabeth… it is the care one takes when they arrange them, the thought behind each fold. One must imagine the day not as a single moment, but as a thousand small details that together form a memory. That is what gives it life. Just as one cannot make a painting with only haste, one cannot make a celebration with only motion.”
Elizabeth nods slowly, her eyes soft with admiration. “You speak as if this is more than mere duty. You have always had the ability to see beyond the superficial. You have the eye of an artist, a mind… that perceives the soul of things. I would be lying if I said I did not feel both grateful and envious.”
You lower your hands, pressing them into your lap. “Grateful, Elizabeth? For what?” you ask, your voice trembling slightly. “For letting me… be here? For letting me be part of this world, when my thoughts are always elsewhere? When my heart is… elsewhere?”
Elizabeth’s smile falters, the warmth in her eyes replaced by concern. “Elsewhere… Y/n, you speak in riddles. Elsewhere from what? I see you here, among us, preparing for joy, preparing for life. And yet you seem… distant, as though something weighs upon you that cannot be spoken aloud.”
You bite your lip, staring down at the ribbons, your fingers tightening involuntarily. “It cannot be spoken, Elizabeth. There are some things one cannot place into words without shattering the world around them, I feel their absence in every moment. Every breath. Every detail. I am… tethered to someone who is not here. Someone I may never see again, yet he occupies every corner of my mind, every stroke of my brush, every sketch I make. And it is unbearable, but I cannot stop. For without him… without his memory… it feels as though a part of me has been severed.”
Elizabeth reaches out, lightly touching your arm. “I cannot imagine such grief. And yet, you endure it with such grace, such dedication… to others, to this day, to us. Tell me, dear sister, do you not feel that the one who is gone… would be proud? That your devotion, though unseen, is the truest form of love?”
You shake your head slowly, pressing your hand over your chest as if to quiet the heartbeat that refuses to settle. “Proud? Perhaps. But pride cannot fill the emptiness left in their absence. It cannot bring warmth when there is only cold. It cannot repair the hollowness, Elizabeth. I am… adrift, clinging to fragments, to memory, to brushstrokes that remind me that I once touched something pure and alive, and now it is… gone.”
She tilts her head, her voice dropping to a whisper, trembling with something you recognize as deep compassion. “y/n, if only I could give you even a fraction of the comfort you deserve. But know this, even in absence, your heart reaches farther than any of us can see. You love beyond sight, beyond presence, beyond hope itself. That is… more than any of us could claim. Perhaps it is that very love which will bring him back to you, if fate allows it.”
A heavy silence falls between you, broken only by the distant echoes of Victor moving somewhere beyond the hallways, and William’s laughter drifting faintly from another room. You lower your eyes, tracing the pattern of the lace on Elizabeth’s sleeve with a trembling finger.
“I do not know if fate allows anything, Elizabeth. I do not know if he is alive, if he even remembers me… but, I cannot let go. I cannot cease. Every brushstroke, every line, every sketch is my proof, my plea.” Your voice catches, choked with the weight of the longing. “It is never enough.”
Elizabeth sighs softly, her own hands clasping yours over the ribbon. “Then you must let your art speak where words fail. Let it carry your soul forward while the rest of the world continues as it must. And do not forget, y/n… we see you, even if the one you long for does not. We feel your grief, your longing, your love. You are not as alone as you believe.”
You swallow hard, nodding, and the ache seems to ease a bit. You stand, straightening your spine despite the heaviness in your chest, and move toward the next room where the fabrics for the bouquets have been laid out. Each flower, each ribbon, each tiny detail of the wedding becomes another reminder of the world that moves on without him. You arrange them with trembling fingers, placing pale blues and soft whites, careful not to let the vibrancy of life overwhelm the muted sadness in your heart.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Hours later, Victor enters the room quietly, observing you from the threshold. “You seem… distracted, y/n,” he says, his voice low, carrying that sharp, possessive edge that has always cut through the fragile world around you. “Distracted in a way that is… unworthy of the attention I require.”
You look up, meeting his gaze, the weight of his presence pressing down on you. “I am distracted, Victor, yes… because my mind is elsewhere. I cannot focus fully on… the celebrations, the arrangements, the insignificance of mortal joy when my heart is tethered to someone who is… absent.”
Victor steps closer, the shadow of jealousy lingering like a winter storm. “And yet,” he says slowly, deliberately, “you give more of your attention to… that which is absent, than to what is here, before your eyes. Why is it that your affection, your devotion, your skill, which is so remarkable and precise, is wasted upon shadows while the living… the breathing, the real, the flesh and blood, is neglected?”
You bite your lip, the heat of anger and hurt welling up inside you, even as a wave of sorrow crashes over your chest.
“Because,” you whisper, trembling, “because the memories, the fragments of him… are all that remain of something beautiful, something honest, something that has touched me in ways you cannot understand. Because they are the only proof that love exists beyond cruelty, beyond human failings. And if I do not tend to it… if I do not honor it… then I have lost everything.”
Victor exhales sharply, his jaw tightening. “And yet you neglect the living. You neglect me, your own brother, in favor of… this- this… ghost you follow. Tell me, y/n, why do you care more for what cannot see you, than for the one who stands before you, watching, breathing, waiting?”
You lower your gaze, trembling. “Because… he had shown me everything. Kindness, trust, innocence… a love untainted by human pride, by jealousy, by fear. And you… you ask why I care more for him than for you? I cannot help it, Victor.”
Victor’s eyes narrow, storming with emotions you cannot name. “You cannot… or you will not.”
“I cannot,” you whisper again, almost a prayer, almost a confession. “I would give all I have, all I am, for him, if it would keep him alive, safe, remembered. And I cannot turn away from that. No matter the cost.”
He stares at you, the room silent except for the faint rustle of snow against the windows. Then, without another word, he turns, leaving you with the muted glow of candlelight and the endless ache of longing that stretches through the estate, through your chest, through the snow and shadows beyond the walls.
You exhale slowly, clutching the folds of lace for Elizabeth’s gown, tracing the delicate embroidery that you helped design, and whisper softly into the empty room, as if he could hear you across the miles of snow and ruin:
“I will not forget. I will paint you until I can see you again. Until the day I can hold you without fear… until then, my heart is yours, even if the world is not.”
Outside, the wind howls against the estate like a mournful chorus, as though echoing the ache in your chest, a reminder that some absences can never be filled, some longing cannot be satisfied, and some love is boundless precisely because it cannot be realized.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
You find yourself watching William and Elizabeth whenever you think no one is looking, observing them not as a sister or a future sister-in-law but as an artist, as someone who studies devotion the way others study anatomy or scripture. You notice the way William’s hand always finds Elizabeth’s back when she is uncertain, the way Elizabeth leans into him without thinking, as if her body has learned his presence by heart, and there is something about it that fills you with such fierce pride that it almost hurts.
They love one another openly, without fear, without shame, and you cannot help but feel that this love, this quiet, steadfast devotion is something earned, something rare, something worth protecting with your life.
And you do protect it, silently, fiercely, because you love them both far too much to ever begrudge them their happiness.
Still.
There is a part of you that aches when you watch them laugh together by the fire, when Elizabeth rests her head on William’s shoulder as though it were the most natural thing in the world, when William murmurs something low enough that only she can hear and her face softens in a way that makes your chest tighten. You turn away when the envy threatens to show itself, because you know it is not ugly envy, not cruel or selfish, but the quiet, sorrowful kind, the kind born from absence.
You envy the certainty. You envy the fact that their love is allowed to exist without consequence. And you hate yourself, just a little, for feeling it at all.
One evening, as snow presses itself against the windows and the house settles into that familiar hush that comes only at dusk, Victor finds you standing in the corridor outside the drawing room, half-hidden by shadow, watching William and Elizabeth through the open door as they pore over wedding plans together, heads bent close, hands brushing now and then.
“You look like you are studying a painting,” Victor says quietly behind you, his voice low, carrying that careful restraint he uses when he is trying not to sound angry.
You don’t turn at once. “Perhaps I am,” you reply softly, your eyes still fixed on the warm, golden scene before you. “It is… balanced. Honest. There is no tension in it, no need to correct anything.”
Victor steps closer, his presence pressing in on you the way it always does now, heavier than it used to be. “You are proud of them,” he says.
“Yes,” you answer immediately, finally turning to face him, your expression earnest, unguarded. “I am proud of them in a way that feels almost… parental, which is ridiculous, I know. William has grown into someone good, Victor. Kind. Steady. And Elizabeth, she has endured so much, and yet she still believes in joy. They deserve one another.”
Victor watches you carefully, his eyes sharp, searching your face for something unspoken. “And yet,” he says slowly, “you look as though their happiness wounds you.”
Your breath catches, but you do not look away. “It does not wound me,” you say, though your voice trembles just enough to betray you. “It reminds me of what I no longer have. Or perhaps… what I was never meant to have in the first place.”
The silence that follows is thick, uncomfortable, and Victor breaks it with a sudden sharpness that startles you. “I am still here,” he says. “Whatever you think you have lost, I am still here. I am your twin. That bond does not vanish simply because others have found happiness.”
You laugh then, a short, brittle sound that surprises even you. “That bond,” you repeat quietly, your gaze drifting back to the doorway, to William’s gentle smile, to Elizabeth’s soft laugh. “Victor, do not insult me by pretending it is the same.”
He frowns at that. “You think it is not?”
“No,” you say, turning fully toward him now, your voice gaining strength despite the ache behind it. “I know it is not. You broke it. Slowly, deliberately, piece by piece, and you expect me to pretend I do not feel the absence.”
Victor’s eyes flash. “You accuse me as though I have committed some great betrayal, when all I have done is pursue knowledge, truth-”
“You pursued obsession,” you interrupt, your voice sharp, trembling with years of restraint. “And you dragged me through it whether I wished to follow or not. You chose your work over me, over us, and now you stand here and tell me we are still the same? We are not, Victor. And it is your fault.”
The words hang between you like a blade.
Victor steps closer, his voice lowering, dangerous now. “You speak as though you are innocent,” he says. “As though you did not abandon me as well.”
Your brow furrows. “Abandon you?”
“Yes,” he snaps. “You abandoned me the moment you stopped speaking to me as you once did. You do not even speak French to me anymore… do you know that? The language used to belong to us. It was ours. A private thing. And now you reserve it for letters, for memories, for ghosts.”
Your chest tightens painfully. “That is not fair,” you whisper.
“Is it not?” Victor presses, his voice rising despite himself. “You shared that language with me when we were children, when we were inseparable, when we were all we had. And now you refuse it, as though even your words must keep their distance from me.”
You shake your head slowly, tears burning behind your eyes. “I did not refuse it,” you say. “I lost it. Just as I lost you.”
“That is a lie,” Victor says harshly. “I am standing here.”
“Yes,” you reply, your voice breaking now, “you are standing here- but you are not the brother I grew up with. You look at me now as though I am something to be reclaimed, not someone to be understood. You speak to me as though my grief is an inconvenience, my love a betrayal.”
Victor’s hands curl into fists at his sides. “You would rather grieve for something that should not exist than acknowledge the bond that does.”
You inhale sharply. “Do not speak of him like that,” you warn, your voice low. “He exists. And he mattered. To me.”
Victor stares at you, something dark and wounded flickering across his face. “And what of me?” he demands. “What of the bond we shared? Am I to watch you give pieces of yourself to everyone else while I am left with nothing but the memory of what we were?”
You meet his gaze, tears finally slipping free. “You are not left with nothing, Victor,” you say softly. “You are left with the consequences of your choices. And so am I.”
For a long moment, neither of you speaks. The sounds of laughter from the drawing room drift toward you, painfully alive, painfully warm, and you turn away from Victor at last, unable to bear the weight of his stare.
“I love them,” you say quietly, more to yourself than to him. “And I will not let my sorrow poison their joy. But do not ask me to pretend that everything is as it once was. I cannot live in that lie anymore.”
Victor says nothing.
And you walk away, leaving him alone in the corridor, you cannot tell whether the ache in your chest is grief for what you lost, or fear for what still remains unresolved between you.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The rehearsal takes place just as the sun begins to sink, the sky bruised lavender and gray, the windows catching the last light like tired eyes refusing sleep. Candles are lit not for celebration but for instruction, placed carefully along the aisle that has been cleared through the great hall, and the air smells faintly of wax and winter and something else you cannot name.
You stand beside Elizabeth, adjusting the fall of her veil with hands that know fabric better than they know peace, smoothing it where it gathers at her shoulders as if beauty itself has learned humility. She watches you in the mirror with that same gentle trust she has always shown you, and it nearly undoes you.
“y/n,” she says quietly, “you have given me more than I could ever have asked for. When I look at this dress, I feel… steady. As though something in me has finally been set right.”
You manage a small smile, stepping back to assess your work, though your vision blurs at the edges. “That is what it is meant to do,” you reply. “It should feel like home, Elizabeth. Not like a costume.”
She reaches for your hand, squeezing it warmly. “You have always understood that. Love should never feel like performance.”
The words strike deeper than she intends. You nod, unable to trust your voice, and turn away before she can see too much in your face.
Across the hall, William practices his steps, trying not to laugh as he miscounts, the joy in him unguarded and bright, and you watch him with a strange mixture of pride and sorrow, your chest aching at the sight of the boy he was and the man he has become. When he finally notices you watching, he grins and gives an exaggerated bow, as if performing for you alone, and you almost laugh.
Almost.
Victor, meanwhile, is everywhere and nowhere at once.
He moves through the hall with an energy that feels wrong. Not tense, not brittle, but almost light, as though he has decided happiness by sheer force of will. He smiles too easily, speaks too warmly, compliments the arrangements with a fake enthusiasm that makes your teeth grind.
“This is perfect,” he says at one point, clapping his hands together softly. “Absolutely perfect. You see? Everything comes together in the end. It always does.”
You stare at him, unsettled, because you know that smile, and you know he’s faking it.
Later, when the rehearsal dissolves into quiet conversation and the servants begin clearing the hall, you find Victor alone near the window, gazing out at the snow-covered grounds as if they contain some private joke only he understands.
“You are remarkably cheerful,” you say, unable to keep the irritation from your voice. “One might almost think nothing has happened to us at all.”
He turns, still smiling. “Nothing has happened,” he says simply. “That is the point. We are here. The family is whole. There is a wedding tomorrow. What more could we possibly need?”
You cross your arms, anger simmering beneath the surface. “Victor, stop it.”
“Stop what?” he asks lightly.
“Pretending,” you snap. “Pretending that the building did not burn, that something precious was not lost, that you did not destroy something that can never be repaired. This-” you gesture vaguely around the hall, the candles, the flowers, the careful arrangements “-this is not a cure. You cannot smile your way out of guilt.”
His expression tightens, though the smile remains, stretched thin now. “You dwell too much on what is gone,” he replies. “It is unhealthy.”
“And you dwell too little,” you shoot back. “It is infuriating.”
For a moment, the air between you feels sharp enough to cut, but then Victor exhales, shaking his head as if indulging a child. “You always were too sensitive,” he says. “Too attached to things that were never meant to last.”
That makes your eye twitch.
Before you can respond, William appears, sensing the tension instinctively, his presence a welcome interruption. “There you are,” he says warmly, slipping an arm around your shoulders without thinking. “I was wondering where you’d gone y/n. Elizabeth is convinced you’ve vanished entirely.”
You relax into him despite yourself, the familiarity grounding you. “I’m still here,” you murmur. “Just… lingering.”
William smiles softly, guiding you away from Victor with a gentle push, leading you toward the quieter corridor near the old staircase. “You always did linger,” he says. “Even as children. You noticed things the rest of us missed.”
He pauses, then adds more softly, “You look tired.”
You huff a quiet laugh. “Is it that obvious?”
“To me,” he says. He hesitates, then speaks again, voice gentler still. “I know this week has been… heavy. I know you carry more than you ever let on.”
You swallow, staring at the floor. “I am happy for you,” you say quickly. “Truly. You and Elizabeth… you make sense. You always have.”
William squeezes your shoulder. “I know. And I know something else too.”
You glance up at him.
He smiles, that kind, earnest smile that has learned to survive every hardship. “Just because you’ve passed what society insists is the ‘proper’ age does not mean your story is finished. I would still very much like to see you married one day, you know. To someone who sees you the way you deserve.”
Your throat tightens painfully. “William…”
“I’m not teasing,” he adds gently. “Well. Maybe a little. But mostly, I mean it. You deserve a love that does not ask you to disappear.”
The words undo you more than he realizes. You press your forehead briefly to his shoulder, breathing him in like a memory of safety. “Thank you,” you whisper. “For believing that.”
He laughs softly. “Of course I do. You’re my sister. That means I get to be impossibly optimistic on your behalf.”
When you return to the hall, Victor watches the two of you from across the room, his expression unreadable, the smile gone now, replaced by something quieter, darker.
And as the candles are extinguished one by one, as the estate settles into uneasy stillness on the eve of a wedding meant to symbolize unity and joy, you cannot shake the feeling that something vital is missing, that the love filling these rooms is only possible because another, truer, more fragile love has been buried beneath ash and silence.
You go to your room that night and dream not of lace or vows or celebration, but of snow, and fire, and a face you long to see again, wondering if joy can ever truly survive when it is built atop grief.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The morning of the wedding is pale and cold, the estate washed in winter light so clean it feels almost unreal, and for the first time in weeks you wake up with something close to peace settling in your chest. Not happiness, but a gentler thing, a willingness to endure, and that alone feels like progress.
You dress slowly, deliberately, letting the white fabric fall into place, smoothing it over yourself with the care of someone who understands how garments speak before their wearer ever does. Everyone will be in white today; it is tradition, expected. And yet, stitched carefully into the bodice of your dress, is the faintest ribbon of baby blue, so subtle it would go unnoticed by anyone not looking for it.
You look for it.
You always do.
When you descend the staircase, the sound of your steps draws attention immediately, conversation dipping as heads turn, eyes narrowing not in hostility but appraisal. They have come for a wedding, yes, but also to see you. To see what became of the strange twin, the one who did not settle, did not marry, did not disappear into respectability.
“Oh,” says a woman you vaguely remember as your mother’s cousin, her voice bright with false delight. “y/n, my dear, it’s been ages. You look… well.”
“Well,” you repeat pleasantly. “I’m glad to hear it shows.”
She tilts her head. “Still unwed, I hear?”
You smile. “Still.”
“And not for lack of opportunity, I assume,” she presses, glancing pointedly at your dress, at your face, at the fact that you were alone. “Such a pity, really. Beauty like yours does not wait forever.”
“No,” you agree calmly. “It does not. Which is why I never waited.”
Her smile tightens.
Another relative steps in, a man with thinning hair and a voice thick with assumption. “You went to Paris, didn’t you? Studied painting? Such an indulgence. I suppose it kept you occupied until something more… permanent presented itself.”
“It did present itself,” you reply evenly. “I chose not to take it.”
His brows knit. “Chose?”
“Yes,” you say, your tone light, almost cheerful. “One does still choose, even at my age.”
A woman nearby laughs softly, though her eyes are sharp. “You always were spirited. Your poor mother used to worry you’d never settle.”
You meet her gaze without flinching. “My mother worried I would settle too easily.”
That earns a pause. A few glances. A shift in the air.
“Well,” the woman says at last, smoothing her gloves. “I suppose not everyone is meant for domestic life. Some women are… more suited to hobbies.”
“Hobbies,” you echo. “Is that what we’re calling careers now?”
Before she can respond, another voice cuts in, warm and firm. “That will be quite enough.”
Victor steps forward then, immaculate in white, his posture straight, his expression composed in that way you recognize immediately, the look he wears when he believes himself righteous. He places himself at your side, close enough to be unmistakable.
“My sister’s work is well regarded,” he says smoothly. “And her personal choices are not subject to review.”
The group murmurs, some surprised, some faintly offended, and you feel Victor’s presence like a shield he has decided to raise whether or not it was asked for.
You glance at him sideways and sigh quietly. “Victor,” you murmur, rolling your eyes, “please don’t.”
He stiffens slightly. “I’m only helping.”
“I know what you’re doing,” you interrupt softly, your smile still fixed for the audience. “And I truly don’t need rescuing.”
Aunt or cousin, someone, adds. “We meant no harm.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” you reply. “But intent does not always soften impact.”
Victor opens his mouth again, clearly prepared to continue his defense, but you step forward before he can, reclaiming the space with practiced ease.
“I am very happy,” you say, addressing the group as a whole now. “Not because my life resembles yours, but because it does not. I paint. I live. I love deeply, even when it costs me. And today, I am here to celebrate my brother and Elizabeth, which is more than enough.”
Silence follows, thick and uncomfortable. Then William appears, mercifully, his presence brightening the moment like sunlight through cloud.
“There you are,” he says warmly, placing a hand on the small of your back. “I was hoping I’d find you before the ceremony.”
He looks pointedly at the gathered relatives, his smile pleasant but unmistakably firm. “I see you’ve all had the chance to get acquainted with my sister.”
“We were just admiring her,” someone says quickly.
William hums. “Good. I suggest you continue doing so… quietly.”
When the cluster of relatives finally disperses, murmuring and offended, William remains at your side, his expression softening the moment the audience is gone.
“Well,” he says lightly, glancing back toward the hall where the guests have retreated, “that was exhausting, and it’s barely midday.”
You laugh under your breath. “You handled them better than I did. I think one of them may still be recovering from the shock of being disagreed with.”
“I take great pride in that,” he replies, then hesitates, his tone shifting into something quieter, more earnest. “Actually… since I’ve rescued you from polite interrogation, I was hoping to steal you for a moment. Elizabeth and I were wondering if there’s anything more we could do, anything small, perhaps to give the ceremony a little… something extra.”
You raise a brow. “Extra?”
“Yes,” William says, smiling sheepishly. “It already feels beautiful, of course, but you have an eye for atmosphere. You always have. I thought, if anyone would know how to make it feel less like a gathering and more like… a moment, it would be you.”
You glance toward the open setting of the hall, where the white-draped aisle stretches beneath the soft glow of candlelight, already elegant, already refined, and yet your mind begins to move instinctively, as it always does, filling the space with possibility.
“What if,” you begin slowly, already seeing it, “the servants carried baskets of flower petals, white roses, perhaps, with a few pale blue forget-me-nots mixed in. And as you and Elizabeth walk, they release them gently from the gallery above, or from either side of the aisle, so that they fall continuously, not all at once, but like snowfall.”
William’s eyes light up. “Continuously?”
“Yes,” you say, warming to the idea. “Not as an announcement, but as a complement. As if the air itself were blessing you. It would soften the space, make it feel… enchanted. Less like a ceremony, more like a promise unfolding.”
He lets out a quiet laugh, delighted. “That’s… that’s brilliant. Elizabeth will love that.”
“And it gives the servants something meaningful to do,” you add gently. “They become part of the moment, not just observers. Everyone contributes to the joy.”
William squeezes your shoulder affectionately. “You see? This is exactly why I asked you. You don’t just decorate things, you understand them.”
You smile, something warm blooming in your chest. “I just see what could be.”
“Well,” he says, already turning toward the staff with renewed energy, “consider it done. I’ll make sure it happens.”
As he moves away, calling instructions with controlled excitement, you stand there for a moment longer, imagining the petals drifting through the air, catching in hair and fabric, turning the stark white ceremony into something living, something gentle and strange and beautiful.
In that same moment, Victor finds you once again and exhales sharply. “You know, you didn’t have to humiliate the guests like that.” he says.
You snort softly. “They’ll recover.”
“I was trying to help,” he insists.
You turn to face him fully. “You were trying to control the situation. There’s a difference.”
His jaw tightens, but before he can respond you leave Victor standing there, surrounded by white and expectation, while you move to find Elizabeth. As the ceremony approaches, and the estate fills with light and murmured anticipation, you adjust the faint blue ribbon at your waist and continue conversing with guests, feeling strangely steady.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
....
He reaches the estate long after night has settled into its bones.
Snow clings to the stone like a second skin, frosting the grand estate until it looks less like a home and more like a mausoleum, all pale pillars and dark windows staring blindly into the cold. And he can faintly hear the laughter and music echoing through the windows. He watches from the treeline for a long time.
Long enough for the ache in his chest to grow unbearable, long enough for the cold to creep through his boots and into his bones, long enough to wonder whether coming here was a mistake born of hope rather than sense. He has learned patience the hard way.
When he moves, it is quiet, not because he wishes to be unseen, but because the world has taught him that survival depends on softness. He slips along the outer wall, fingers grazing stone, until he finds what he is looking for; a side entrance left unsecured, carelessness born of familiarity. Humans forget danger exists when they believe themselves safe.
Inside, the air is warmer, heavy with candle smoke and fabric and the faint echo of footsteps. His breath fogs briefly before settling, and he pauses, listening, orienting himself by instinct rather than memory.
He does not know how he knows where to go. But he does. Stairs. A corridor. A door at the end. And he ends up at what he assumes is Victor’s room. The handle turns easily beneath his hand.
The chamber is dark except for the moonlight bleeding in through tall windows and some lit candles, illuminating shelves of books, scattered papers, and the familiar scent of ink and oil and something sharper beneath it all, ambition, old and unprecedented . He steps inside slowly, reverently, as though crossing into a place of worship rather than trespass.
This is where he was imagined again and again after the fire. This is where the man who made him sleeps.
He looks around with something like curiosity rather than hatred, eyes lingering on the desk, the half-burned notes, the ink-stained fingerprints left behind in margins and smudges. He reaches out, touching the edge of the bed, the carved wood smooth beneath his palm, grounding himself in the reality of it, in the truth that this place exists and therefore so must everything that came from it. You left me, he thinks, though the thought is not yet shaped enough to be words.
Then- Footsteps.
The Creature hides just as the door opens.
Victor enters carrying a candle, already mid-thought, already distracted, before noticing things in his room have been tampered with.
“Come out of the shadows, if you are here.” he asks, breathing shakily.
Just as the creature steps out from behind a mirror, the candle slips from Victor’s hand and crashes to the floor, flame sputtering wildly as wax spills across the rug.
“No,” Victor breathes, voice thin, disbelieving, “no, that’s not-”
The Creature does not move.
He watches the man who made him stare as though confronted by a ghost clawed out of his own grave, eyes wide, skin drained of color, mouth opening and closing without sound.
“You’re dead,” Victor says hoarsely, backing away until his shoulders hit the wall, “I saw it burn. I ended you.”
The Creature’s chest tightens. Dead. Ended.
The words strike something raw inside him, and the fragile calm he has carried across snow and memory fractures.
“Yes, yet I stand before you, alive and well,” he says, and the sound of his own voice, rough and uneven but real, fills the room like a thunderclap.
Victor flinches.
“Are you here to thank me? You survived, and are intelligent enough to have found me. I made you well,” Victor snaps reflexively, fear sharpening into anger.
Something in the Creature snaps then, too.
“You left me,” he says again, louder now, each word dragged from somewhere deep and aching, “you made me and you left me in chains and fire and darkness, and you called it mercy.”
He takes a step forward.
Victor recoils as though struck.
The noise comes suddenly as the Creature’s suddenly grabs Victor and tosses him against a display of guns, anger surging uncontrolled, years of abandonment erupting into sound, motion and pain.
The house stirs. Down the corridor, hurried footsteps. Voices.
“Victor?”
“Did you hear that?”
The door flies open.
You arrive with Elizabeth in tow, skirts gathered in your hands, breath quick, heart already pounding with dread before your eyes can even make sense of what they see.
And then you see him.
The world stops.
As if time itself recoils, unsure how to continue now that something impossible stands breathing in the same space as you.
He stands in the center of the room, massive and impossible and alive, moonlight carving his features into something almost sculptural, scars mapping his skin like history written in flesh. Your knees weaken before your mind can catch up, and for one terrifying moment you think you might collapse under the weight of it. The proof, the confirmation, the unbearable relief.
Your chest aches as though something long buried has torn its way back to the surface.
His head snaps toward the sound of your sudden entrance, and the fury draining through him halts as if struck by lightning.
You.
The memory has a face now.
The kindness has a body.
You freeze, one hand pressed instinctively to your mouth as tears form well before you can stop them, your vision blurring until he becomes nothing but shape and light and memory layered over itself, your voice breaking as his name leaves you in a whisper that trembles through the room like a prayer.
“It's you… you’re- you’re here,” you breathe, stepping forward without thinking, without fear, “you’re alive.”
Elizabeth gasps behind you, horror and confusion warring across her face when she sees the blood coming from Victor, but you barely notice. Your entire world has narrowed to the being before you, to the way his shoulders tense at the sound of your voice, to the way his eyes search your face desperately, hungrily, as though afraid you might vanish if he looks away for even a second.
He knows you.
He knows your voice.
He has heard it in dreams he did not know how to name, felt it echo in the hollow spaces of his chest when the nights were too quiet and the memories too loud.
“y/n…” he says, and though the word is simple, it carries everything. Recognition, relief, longing, devotion.
The sound of his voice undoes you.
Victor shouts your name sharply, reaching for you, panic flaring anew. “Don’t go near him! You don’t know what he-”
“I know,” you interrupt, never taking your eyes off him as you step closer still, your voice trembling not with fear but with something dangerously close to joy, “I know exactly who he is.”
Adam’s breath shudders. You remember him.
You stop just short of him, close enough to see the way his hands tremble, the way his chest rises and falls too fast, the way his eyes shine with unshed tears he doesn’t yet understand. Slowly, carefully, as though approaching a wounded animal rather than a monster, you lift your hand and caress his face, to let him see that you are real, that you are choosing him again.
“I never stopped thinking about you,” you whisper, voice thick with emotion, every word a confession, “I painted you every day. I told myself that it meant you were real, that you had to be.”
His fingers curl reflexively, as though resisting the urge to reach for you, to anchor himself in the warmth of your skin, to prove to himself that this is not another cruel imagining.
He does not touch you.
He is afraid to.
Victor watches in horror as the distance between creator and creation collapses in favor of something he never anticipated, because for the first time, standing in his childhood room, watching his sister reach for the being he tried to erase, he realizes the truth too terrible to admit.
The Creature did not come back for vengeance.
He came back for you.
And the bond Victor thought he owned. The bond of blood, of twin souls, has already slipped through his fingers, reborn in something he can neither control nor destroy.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The moment fractures not with a scream, but with a sound that does not belong in a bedroom meant for childhood dreams.
Metal scraping wood.
A sharp intake of breath.
Victor’s hand moving before his mind can catch up.
You barely register the gun until it is already there, lifted from where it laid forgotten against the floor, its weight familiar to Victor’s hand in a way that chills you because it means he has imagined this moment before, imagined needing it, imagined being cornered by his own creation and having no other language left but violence.
You can feel it in the way Victor’s breathing turns uneven, in the way his hand tightens around the weapon as though it is the only thing tethering him to reality, in the way his eyes no longer look at the Creature as a threat but at you as something unbearably unfamiliar, something that has slipped out of the shape he thought he understood.
The Creature stands behind you, close enough that you can feel the heat of him at your back, close enough that when you lift your arms in a wordless, instinctive attempt to shield him, the movement feels less like a decision and more like a truth finally spoken aloud by your body.
“Victor.” you say, and your voice trembles not with fear but with urgency, with the desperate need to pull him back from the edge he is sprinting toward, “you are not thinking clearly, you are seeing enemies where there are none, please- look at me.”
He does look. And in that moment, the gun ceases to be aimed at his creation.
It is aimed at you.
Not deliberately, not at first, but because you are standing where Victor no longer believes you belong, because you are positioned in defense of something he has convinced himself is an insult to everything he is, everything he has sacrificed, everything he believes he owns.
“Move,” he says, voice tight and shaking, the word scraped raw from his throat, “get out of the way.”
“No,” you answer, without hesitation, because there is nothing left to weigh, “I won’t.”
The Creature makes a sound behind you, almost like a growl, his hand lifting as if to pull you back, as if to place himself between you and the danger instead, but you do not move, you do not turn, your eyes never leaving Victor’s face as you take one careful step closer.
“You made him,” you say, your voice breaking now despite your effort to keep it steady, “and you abandoned him, and now you want to punish him for surviving that abandonment, and I won’t let you do it, not again, not like this.”
Victor laughs, a short, hollow sound that seems to surprise even him.
“Listen to you,” he says, disbelief twisting his features into something sharp and cruel, “listen to the way you speak about it, as if it were capable of deserving loyalty, as if it were capable of loving you back.”
“It already has,” you say quietly.
The words land like a blow.
Victor’s grip tightens.
Elizabeth takes a step forward, horror dawning too late in her eyes. “Victor, stop, this has gone far enough, you’re frightening her-”
“She is not frightened,” Victor snaps, his voice rising, cracking under the strain of his own unraveling, “she is choosing, and she has chosen wrong.”
Your chest tightens.
“This isn’t a choice,” you say, tears stinging your eyes now as you shake your head, unable to comprehend how thoroughly he has twisted this moment into something it was never meant to be, “this is kindness, this is decency, this is what you taught me to be before you forgot how to be it yourself.”
Something in Victor’s expression changes then.
Not fear.
Conviction.
“So that’s it,” he says, very softly now, dangerously so, his eyes burning with a clarity that terrifies you far more than his earlier panic, “you stand with him.”
Adam shifts behind you, his breath quickening, his body tense as though ready to move, ready to shield you, ready to be destroyed if it means keeping you safe.
You open your mouth to speak again.
The gun fires.
The sound is violent and absolute, tearing through the air with a force that feels unreal, and the impact slams into your shoulder like a hammer, spinning you sideways as pain erupts so suddenly and so completely that your breath is ripped from your lungs in a broken cry.
Your arm goes numb almost instantly, heat blooming beneath the fabric of your dress as your hand flies instinctively to the wound, your fingers coming away slick, and for one dizzying moment the world tilts and blurs and you think you might fall straight to the floor.
Elizabeth screams your name.
The gun slips from Victor’s hand the moment the sound finishes tearing through the room.
It hits the floor with a dull clatter, as though it were nothing more than another object misplaced, as though it were not the thing that has just rewritten every life standing within these walls.
“No-” Victor breathes, the word collapsing in on itself as he stares at you, his eyes finally seeing what he has done, finally registering the way your body has recoiled, the way your arm hangs wrong at your side, the way your white dress is already darkening where your hand presses desperately against your shoulder.
“I- I didn’t-” His voice breaks completely now as he staggers forward a step, horror flooding his face so violently it looks like pain. “God, I didn’t mean to- I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
You sway.
The room tilts.
Pain hums through you in sickening waves, sharp enough to steal your consciousness, but deep enough to make every breath a conscious effort, and before your knees can give out, before you can even decide whether you want to stay standing or fall, Adam is there.
He moves with terrifying gentleness.
One arm slides beneath your knees, the other braces your back, catching you effortlessly, as if the act itself is a promise, I will not let you fall, not ever again. Your head lolls briefly against his chest, and you feel his breath hitch, his entire body tensing as he adjusts his grip to avoid your injured shoulder, his hands trembling not from weakness but from restraint.
“No,” he says again, louder now, his voice shaking with something feral and incandescent, “no, no, no.”
Victor reaches out instinctively, fingers brushing empty air as you are carried out of his reach.
“Put her down,” Victor shouts, his voice cracking as he follows helplessly, “please, just put her down, let me- let me help her.”
Adam turns.
And for the first time, he does not look at Victor with confusion, or fear, or even yearning.
He looks at him with absolute clarity.
“How exactly are you going to help?” he says, the words coming slower now, more deliberate, his voice deep and rough but unmistakably angry, “you made her bleed, and now you say you’ll help?”
Elizabeth is frozen across Victor, hands clasped to her mouth, unable to look away from the sight of you cradled against him, your dress staining, your face pale but still turned toward the Creature as if you are trying to reassure him.
“You made me,” Adam continues, stepping back as Victor advances again, desperation etched into every line of his face, “you left me, you chained me, you burned me, and still she stood for me, still she believed I could be more than you ever were.”
Victor shakes his head violently. “Stop- stop twisting this, you don’t understand-”
“I understand,” he snaps, his voice rising now, echoing off the walls, carrying years of silence finally broken, “you fear what you cannot own, and you hate what loves without permission.”
You stir weakly in his arms, your fingers curling into his coat as you force yourself to speak despite the pain.
“Please,” you whisper, your voice barely audible, “don’t- don’t make this worse, just take me with you”
Adam looks down at you instantly, fury softening into something agonizingly tender, his thumb brushing your sleeve near your wrist, careful not to touch anywhere that might hurt.
“I will take you somewhere safe,” he murmurs, almost to himself, “away from him.”
Footsteps thunder suddenly in the corridor. Voices raised, alarmed, panicked.
William freezes in the doorway. For one terrible second, he does not seem to understand what he is seeing. The overturned furniture, Elizabeth crying, Victor pale and shaking, and then his eyes find you.
The blood. The way you are being carried. The sound he makes is raw and broken.
“y/n,” William chokes, rushing forward before stopping short, his hands lifting helplessly as if he doesn’t know whether to reach for you or for the man holding you, “what- what happened to you.”
You turn your head toward him with effort, managing the smallest, weakest smile. “It’s- it’s alright,” you lie gently, “I’ll be fine.”
William’s face crumples.
Victor lunges forward again. “William, don’t let him leave, he’s dangerous, he-”
“Dangerous?” William roars, finally snapping, his voice echoing with a fury Victor has never heard from him before. “She’s bleeding, Victor. She’s bleeding! What did you do?”
Victor opens his mouth, but before he can find the words Adam turns and carries you out.
Down the corridor. Down the stairs. Out into the open.
The estate is still full of wedding guests, white fabric and candlelight and soft music that falters and dies the moment they see you emerge, cradled in the arms of a towering figure they do not recognize, your dress no longer pristine, the blue ribbon at your waist stark against the spreading stain.
Gasps ripple through the crowd. Hands fly to mouths. Someone screams.
Adam walks steadily, deliberately, each step measured, his posture protective, his gaze fixed ahead, ignoring the shock, the whispers, the fear, because none of it matters. Not compared to the fragile weight of you in his arms, not compared to the way your breath stutters against his chest.
William follows a few steps behind, stunned and heartbroken, shouting for help, for doctors, for someone to do something, while Victor stands frozen in the doorway, watching the consequences of his choice be carried away from him in full view of everyone he ever loved.
Your head rests against Adam’s chest as the cold night air hits your skin, your eyes fluttering as exhaustion pulls at you, but before they close, you manage to whisper one last thing, meant only for him.
“You came back for me,” you murmur.
He tightens his hold just slightly, as if anchoring you to him, his voice low and certain when he answers.
“Of course I did. You were the first kindness I ever knew, and I could not let it be the last.”
And behind you, the estate watches in horrified silence as the story they thought they were celebrating finally reveals what it has always been. A tragedy, walking openly into the night.
Pairing(s): The Creature/Adam Frankenstein x Fem!Frankenstein twin sister! painter reader.
Warning(s): MDNI!! Slowburn. Really HEAVYYYY yearning from both parties lol. Some descriptions of gore and abuse, disturbing imagery, later chapters will contain smut, a problematic and emotionally manipulative sibling relationship, Victor is weirdly attracted to his sister…
Word count: 4.1k
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
You wake up, and feel like someone has carved a hollow space into your chest with a dull, merciless blade. It’s not pain exactly, pain has edges, definition, something the body recognizes and tries to resist. This is different. This is an absence. A hole. A cavity where something once lived inside you, warm and tentative and impossibly new, only to be torn out so violently that your ribs still feel sore from the loss.
You breathe, and it’s cold. You open your eyes, and everything feels wrong.
The ceiling overhead is not stone, not the cool curved vaults of the laboratory or the damp darkness of its lower tunnels. Instead, it is white plaster marked with faint cracks, familiar cracks, cracks you memorized as a child when you lay awake listening to storms in the mountains surrounding your home.
Your childhood estate. Your old bedroom. You’re home. And it feels unbearable.
You sit up slowly, your limbs aching in ways your mind doesn’t fully register. The sheets are clean, pressed, too soft. The fireplace still glows with a dying ember someone tended in the early morning hours. Outside the window, the snow is deep and untouched across the estate grounds, blanketing everything in a silence that feels suffocating rather than peaceful.
You touch your throat and the faint bruising is still there. You remember Victor’s hands around your neck. You remember the Creature screaming your name.
You remember- and you remember… But the memories are like broken glass. Every time you reach for one, another cuts you. A floorboard creaks outside your room. You stiffen, and your heart thrashes painfully against your ribs. The handle turns, slowly, hesitantly, and then Victor stands there, half-silhouetted in the doorway, leaning heavily on a cane made of polished dark wood.
His right leg ends mid-knee. The prosthetic, strapped to him with leather harnessing, gleams faintly where it catches the thin morning sun. He’s paler than you’ve ever seen him, dark circles blooming under his eyes, his hair disheveled as though he hasn’t slept since the night the building burned.
He takes one step inside, wincing as the false limb adjusts.
“Good… morning.”
You say nothing.
His face tightens. Guilt, longing, fear, confusion all warring behind his eyes. He tries again, voice fragile.
“Does it hurt? I mean- are you in pain?”
Still, you don’t respond.
He swallows hard. His fingers twitch at his side, like he wants to reach for you but no longer knows if he’s allowed. “I- I brought you home,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “You weren’t breathing at first. I thought-” His voice breaks. He looks down at the floor. “I thought I had killed you.”
You turn your face away. He flinches as though struck.
Silence stretches long and thin between you, and finally Victor steps back, his limp more noticeable now, as though your refusal to acknowledge him weighs down his artificial leg even more than his flesh-and-blood injury.
“If… if you need anything,” he whispers, “just call for me.”
He leaves your room quietly, but you notice him leave the door open. The gesture feels wrong, an intrusion, a desperate attempt to keep watch over you the way he did as children, always hovering, always clinging, always afraid you’d slip from him.
You rise from the bed, the cold floor biting your feet, and walk to the easel standing near the window. It’s already set up. Canvas stretched. Brushes clean. Pigments laid out in neat rows.
Victor prepared it for you.
You ignore the twist of guilt in your stomach and sink into the stool. Your hand moves before you can think, reaching for charcoal. Its weight is familiar. Comforting. Something that still listens to you even when your world refuses to make sense.
And then you begin to draw him. The Creature.
His face emerges from the white canvas in strokes that feel both feverish and reverent. The strong line of his jaw, the scars like rivers of silvered flesh, his large deep-set eyes that held fear, wonder, innocence, all the things Victor refused to see. Your hand trembles as you shade the place where the lightning-scorched tissue had begun to tighten into something strangely beautiful. You draw him again.
And again.
And again.
Hours pass.
Maybe days.
You don’t speak.
You barely eat.
You don’t leave the estate grounds.
Painting becomes a compulsion, you need it, not because it soothes you, but because without it the emptiness returns, cracking through your ribs like frost.
Sometimes Elizabeth brings you tea and tries to speak with you in her soft, gentle voice, telling you she’s worried, telling you she and William are staying for as long as you need, that she understands grief even if she doesn’t yet know the full story. You nod politely, but you remain silent.
Sometimes William peeks into your studio, face worried, his eyes darting toward your canvases before he quickly looks away, as though afraid the portraits of the Creature might somehow look back at him.
But Victor.
Victor comes to your doorway every morning and every night. He never speaks unless you acknowledge him. You never do. And each day, he looks a little more hollowed-out, a little more frantic under the surface, his jealousy simmering even in your silence, as if the mere fact that you paint the Creature is enough to reopen something festering and possessive deep inside him.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
One late evening, long after Elizabeth and William have gone to bed, you step outside for the first time in days. Snow crunches beneath your feet as you walk to the edge of the estate’s frozen lake. The night is sharp and blisteringly cold, breath rising in pale clouds. Your fingers sting, but you welcome the sensation; it’s the first thing you’ve felt clearly since waking.
You kneel and press your hand into the snow. It burns. But it is real. Real, unlike the ache in your chest that never leaves you. For a moment, you close your eyes.
“Where are you?” you whisper into the dark
The wind stirs, brushing cold across your face, as if something answers. Or as if something remembers. You stand, returning to the house, and in the upper window you see Victor watching you, his face pressed to the glass, pale and desperate and haunted by the truth he cannot undo. He knows who you were calling for. And he knows it wasn’t him.
When you return to your room, you find another blank canvas waiting for you. Your hands shake as you pull it onto the easel, but before you can even choose a pigment, an image rises in your mind, unbidden, vivid, almost painfully detailed.
Him. Standing in the snow. Looking for you. You inhale sharply. This one… you paint slower. More gently. The yearning in his eyes. The cold on his skin. The loneliness in the way his shoulders hunch as though trying to shrink himself smaller. And as you paint, the strangest thing happens, your chest aches less. Just enough, like there is something alive in these paintings.
Something warm. Something that stirs whenever your brush touches the canvas.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
You have barely slept.
Your dreams were full of snow and shadows and reaching hands, hands you recognized but could no longer touch. Before dawn you lit a single candle, pulled another canvas onto the easel, and began painting with the kind of desperate precision that only grief can teach. Your strokes are slow but sure, tracing the shape of the Creature’s cheekbone, the scar that arcs over his nose, the soft, questioning expression he wore when you taught him how to hold charcoal in his oversized fingers.
You paint him as you remember him, alive.
Somewhere far down the hall a door closes quietly. Footsteps follow, uneven and dragging, the unmistakable sound of Victor adjusting his prosthetic as he walks. Usually you hear him, know exactly when he approaches, but this time you are so lost in the hollow ache of your own chest that you don’t register his presence until his shadow spills across the floorboards at your feet.
You stop painting.
He stands in the doorway, unshaven, exhausted, but with a strange clarity burning behind his eyes. His gaze drifts to the canvas, and something in him twists sharply, visibly, like a wire pulled too tight.
He steps inside without asking. He does not speak. He only stares at the painting. Your brush stills in your hand, and for a moment neither of you breathe. Then Victor whispers, in a voice that scratches like frostbitten branches:
“…How many?”
You blink, confused.
“What?”
He gestures with one trembling hand toward the other canvases stacked against the walls, dozens of them, crowded, frantic, tender, obsessive, a gallery of one face, one presence, one memory that refuses to leave you.
“How many?” he repeats, breath shivering with something between rage and heartbreak. “How many times have you painted him? How many hours have you spent thinking of him instead of-”
He cuts himself off.
You set your brush down and massage your temples. “Victor… please don’t start this. Not today.”
“Not today?” His laugh is empty, cracking in the middle. “Every day is today. Every day since we left that burning building, you have not said a single word to me, nor even looked at me unless I force you to. But you speak to him.” His jaw clenches as his eyes dart over the nearest portrait. “You touch these canvases the way you used to touch my face when we were children. You look at him with-”
“With what.” Your voice is quiet, but it stops him cold. “With grief? With longing? With guilt? Victor, I am allowed to grieve.”
He moves toward you, dragging his bad leg, desperation rolling off him in waves. “Grieve what?” he asks harshly. “He’s a thing- my experiment, my creation, my proof that death could be undone. And you- you, my own sister, my twin- you look at him as though he were alive in a way I am not.”
Your fingers curl at your sides. “Because he was alive, Victor. Fully. Innocently. And you chained him like an animal. And then you tried to…” You stop, hand instinctively rising to your throat.
His expression shatters.
He takes another step forward, voice cracking. “I was not myself. I- God, you must know that I would never intentionally-”
But you lift a hand, stopping him. “Don’t lie. Not to me. Not when you’ve always prided yourself on being the only one who speaks the truth.” Your breath is unsteady as your eyes lock with his. “You were jealous.”
He flinches as though struck.
“You were jealous,” you repeat, softer but far more devastating, “that someone else might care for me. That someone else- no matter how different, how strange, how newly born… might see something in me you thought belonged to you alone.”
Victor’s voice turns hoarse. “You are my twin.”
“I am not one of your possessions.”
Silence explodes between you, filling the room with something sharp enough to cut skin.
He looks at you, then at the painting, the Creature’s gentle, curious, lightning-touched face, and something inside him seems to split wide open, revealing all the rotted places underneath.
“I brought you home,” he whispers. “I nearly died carrying you out of that hell, and you haven’t spoken my name since.”
You swallow hard.
“Victor… bringing me home does not erase what you did.”
He staggers as though your words push against his injured leg. He catches himself on the edge of your desk, breathing hard, and when he speaks again, the desperation is gone, replaced by a quiet, terrifying softness.
“Do you love him?”
Your breath catches. The candle flickers violently. The entire world seems to tilt.
“I…”
You look at your painting, at his face, his eyes, the innocence you saw in them. Your voice breaks.
“I don’t know what I feel. I only know that he wasn’t a monster.”
Victor’s jaw tightens. “He said your name.”
You look up sharply. “What?”
“In the sewer,” Victor murmurs, eyes going distant, haunted by memory. “Yes, he said my name first… but then he said yours.” His hand curls into a fist. “The first word he spoke, your name on his tongue, like it belonged to him.”
Your heart stumbles in your chest.
You whisper breathlessly, “Victor… he was calling for me. He could barely speak and he tried to- he reached for me…”
“Exactly.” Victor’s voice is low, breaking, furious, grieving.
“He reached for you. And you- you reached back.”
His breathing grows shallow. You can see it, the fear. The jealousy. The terrible, unspoken truth he has never admitted: He feels like he is losing you. Not to another man. Not to society or marriage or distance. But to the very thing he created. You step back, instinctively creating distance. Victor watches the movement with devastation.
Then something gives way inside him, not anger, but exhaustion. He collapses into the chair across from you, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.
“You haven’t spoken to me since that night,” he says quietly, voice muffled. “I have nightmares of your face turning blue beneath my hands. I wake choking. I wake reaching for you. I wake- and you are gone from me.”
You swallow, throat thick. You hate him for what he did. You pity him for what he fears. You mourn him for what he’s losing. But the truth is- You are gone. Somewhere inside.
Changed irrevocably the moment the Creature looked at you with something human and vulnerable and searching. You sit across from Victor slowly, hands clasped in your lap.
“I did not leave you,” you tell him with quiet finality. “You pushed me away.”
He looks up at you, eyes red-rimmed, and whispers as though confessing to a sin. “I am terrified of losing you.”
You meet his gaze, steady and unflinching. “Then stop trying to cage me.”
Your words linger in the room long after Victor falls silent. He doesn’t answer. He can’t. Because the truth is too large for him to swallow.
And as you rise to return to your canvas, painting the face of the one who still haunts your dreams, Victor watches you with the hollow despair of a man realizing that the person he loves more than anything in the world- no longer belongs to him alone.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
....
He had been walking for days.
Through forests coated in white, across frozen fields where the wind howled like a wounded animal, through valleys where even the crows refuse to land. His feet sink into the snow with heavy, deliberate steps, the weight of his massive body leaving deep impressions that fill with drifting ice almost as soon as they are made. But he does not stop. He cannot.
Because something has begun to stir again inside his mind, something older than words, older than the blind man’s gentle teachings, older even than the fire that first stole his breath and his sight before returning them both in a shape not entirely human.
A memory. Warm. Soft-edged. Bright in a way nothing else in his new life has been. He remembers kindness. Not the gentle, fragile kindness of the old blind man who offered him bread and books and trembling human warmth, though that too has carved itself into his chest like a brand, but another kindness. One made of whispers and cool fingertips and a voice that broke into softness whenever it spoke to him.
He sees it only in fragments. A hand brushing something from his face. A touch at his cheek, briefly anchoring him to a world that was otherwise full of pain.
A voice murmuring, “…it’s alright… breathe…”
A shape leaning over him, blurry, faceless, but surrounded by light. He does not know the name. But the memory makes his steps quicken, makes his chest tighten with an ache he cannot name.
The old blind man taught him many things, words, meanings, the difference between hunger and hurt, between want and need, between good and evil. He taught him how to speak in slow, patient phrases, to shape sounds like stones placed carefully in a stream.
But he did not teach him what to do with longing, or with grief. Or with the way his chest burns whenever he thinks of that gentle ghost from his earliest days. So he follows the memory the only way he knows, north, toward the mountains the blind man’s family whispered about before they fled in terror. Toward a place where lightning had once struck again and again, like a storm that refused to die.
He walks until the shape of a building emerges from the snow, collapsed walls, blackened beams, a skeleton of scorched stone and iron. Something deep inside him shudders. He knows this place. Even if his mind fights to forget, his bones do not.
The laboratory. His birthplace. His beginning.
He approaches slowly, each step cracking the thin sheet of ice that has swallowed the ruins. The door hangs crooked, half-melted, half-frozen, and when he pulls it open, the wood splinters beneath his fingertips.
Inside, almost everything is destroyed, tables overturned, machines melted into crooked shapes, papers scattered like charred birds’ wings across the floor. He crouches, lifting one fragment after another, reading with halting, uncertain speech.
He does not understand every word. But he understands enough. And yet… Yet the faint memory of warmth does not belong to this place.
He searches deeper into the ruins, pushing aside collapsed beams and stone blocks until he finds a narrow passage, half-fallen in on itself, leading to the remnants of another room. Snow has drifted in through the holes in the roof, forming white mounds around half-burned furniture.
And near the center- He sees color. Something not white, not black, not grey, but familiar, painfully familiar. He kneels. The snow crunches beneath his weight, and he brushes his fingers slowly over the object buried beneath the frost.
A painting.
The edges are singed, the surface warped from heat and then water, but not so ruined that he cannot see the image.
His own face stares back at him.
Crude, uneven, but… careful. Intentional. Lines drawn with study, with time, with attention. With affection. He touches his cheek where the brushstrokes recreate the jagged scar he remembers feeling before he even understood what scars were.
He lifts the painting carefully, holding it against his broad chest to keep the wind from tearing it. Beneath it is another, and another, some half-burned, some drenched through with snowmelt, some torn but still holding the hint of your hand.
More paintings than he can count. Some are simple sketches, barely more than charcoal outlines. Others show him sitting, sleeping, eyes closed. Another shows a hand reaching toward him.
Your hand.
His breath grows shaky. Something flares sharply in his mind, a memory like a spark reigniting a dead fire.
He sees you.
Not clearly, but clearer than before, hair falling over your face as you leaned next to him. Your voice saying his name, no, not his name, but a sound you made gently, a half-formed attempt to call him something before he had a name at all. Your fingers brushing the damp from his brow.
Your whisper, “You’re not alone. I’m here.” He freezes.
The paintings slip slightly in his grip. He remembers you.
Not perfectly but enough to burn through him with overwhelming force, a heat that feels too large for his chest.
“You…” His voice cracks. “You… were real.”
He looks around the room wildly, as though you might step out from behind a collapsed pillar, as though your voice might echo off the ruined walls again. But there is only silence. Only snow drifting in from the broken roof. Only the remains of the world you once shared with him in the briefest, softest moment of his newborn life.
He gathers the paintings, every scrap, every fragment, every ruined canvas still bearing the mark of your hand. He presses them to his chest with a protectiveness that borders on reverence.
A faint, broken sound escapes him, half whimper, half word, something raw and startling in the still air.
“y… y…” He tries to shape a name.
He tries again. “Y…”
“No…”
His brow pulls together as he forces the sound out, clumsy but determined.
“y/n.”
And then, softer “Where… are you?”
The wind answers him, cold and empty. But he is no longer empty. He stands, clutching the paintings against him like fragile life, and turns his face toward the direction the wind carries the faintest scent of warmth, humanity, and distant fire.
He will find you. Even if it takes him through snowstorms and across mountains and into shadows darker than anything he has yet known.
He has nothing else. No name. No past. Nothing but the memory of your kindness- and the art you made of him with hands that trembled not from fear, but from tenderness.
Then something flutters near the corner of his vision, a single letter, charred at the edges. He watches it for a long moment, unsure why his chest tightens at the sight of something so delicate. Then he rises, carefully tucking the paintings under his arm, and follows it as it slides across the floor of the ruined laboratory.
The wind lets it fall at last near a half–collapsed timber beam outside the building. It settles gently, as if exhausted from running. The seal is broken already. The handwriting is elegant, looping, unmistakably human. There is a name at the top. Victor Frankenstein.
The Creature’s breath catches.
He stares at the script as though the letters themselves might rearrange into meaning. He traces them with one large fingertip, slowly, like a blind man reading by touch.
Victor. The first name he ever learned. It feels heavy in his mind, strangely familiar, strangely hated, strangely important. With stiff hands he opens the letter.
The ink has run slightly from the snow, but the words remain coherent.
Victor,
We have returned to the estate as you instructed. Elizabeth and I have taken rooms in father’s old guest wing. Please send word of your recovery, and of sister’s condition... We are worried. Her absence is felt deeply.
William Frankenstein.
He reads it twice. Three times. Each word landing in his mind like stones tossed in deep water.
“Sister…” His voice is low, rough. “Condition…”
He doesn’t know these meanings completely, but he knows concern when he sees it.
And your absence, the words echo inside him. You. You were gone before the fire. Taken. Stolen. Moved. Something in him flares, protective, aching, fierce.
He turns the page over.
On the back is an address, written in elegant script. He does not know the city. He does not know the roads. But he recognizes the structure, like the blind man taught him. A place. A destination. A way to you. He touches the letters gently, as if afraid they might vanish beneath his fingertips. Then he presses the letter against his chest beside your paintings.
A decision forms inside him, solid and bright as lightning.
The sky is darkening again, heavy with the promise of more snow. The wind cuts through the ruined beams and whistles through broken glass. But the cold does not slow him now.
He steps out of the ruins. He leaves it behind without looking back, except once—briefly—when a gust of wind knocks over a collapsed metal structure and sends a hollow clang echoing through the empty frame of the laboratory.
It sounds like a door slamming.
He tightens his grip on the fragments of your art and starts walking. But moving with purpose, toward the address written on the back of the letter, toward a city he does not know, toward the place where the ink says your presence was felt deeply.
Toward you. Each heavy step carves a deeper determination into the snow. He walks through forests where branches scrape his arms like accusing fingers. Through icy rivers that rise to his waist and numb even his powerful limbs. Through hills where wolves follow him at a distance but never dare draw near.
Night falls. But he keeps going. The letter, the paintings, your memory, are guarded in his arms like sacred relics. Though he has only pieces of you, your voice, your hands, your kindness- though your face refuses to form fully in his mind…
He whispers softly into the wind, “You are real.” He walks on.
“Wait for me, please.” He walks on. “I’m coming for you.”
And with each step, the thought becomes clearer, sharper, truer. He will find you.
Pairing(s): The Creature/Adam Frankenstein x Fem!Frankenstein twin sister! painter reader.
Warning(s): MDNI!! Slowburn. Really HEAVYYYY yearning from both parties lol. Some descriptions of gore and abuse, disturbing imagery, later chapters will contain smut, a problematic and emotionally manipulative sibling relationship, Victor is weirdly attracted to his sister…
Word Count: 3.5k
Authors Note: I’ve been so incredibly sick the past week it’s actually horrible... I wrote whenever I felt like my head wasn’t actively trying to burst open LOL so enjoy :)
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The house becomes a tomb the moment William and Elizabeth leave. Elizabeth’s worried face lingers in the doorway of your memory like a painted portrait refusing to fade. Her parting words, “Something feels wrong here, y/n… please be careful”, still cling to your skin the way the sea-mist clings to the cliff walls. When the echo of hooves finally disappears, silence swallows the building whole.
Victor stands beside you in the foyer, rigid as a statue. His jaw clenches and unclenches, a faint tremor in his hands betraying the storm inside him. He finally exhales a thin, sharp thread of breath.
“Thank God they’re gone,” he murmurs, but the words have no relief in them. They sound instead like a man whispering a prayer moments before he breaks.
You turn to him. “Victor… what’s wrong?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even look at you. Instead, he wheels around without warning and strides toward the stairwell leading upwards. You feel dread rise like a tide, irresistibly pulling you in his wake. And so you follow.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The iron staircase creaks under your steps. Candlelight wavers on the damp stone walls. The deeper you go, the more the air thickens with cold and the distant roar of the ocean slamming against the cliff. You reach the sewer chamber and there he is. The creature sits where he always sits when waiting for you, straight-backed despite the chain fastened to his wrist, large hands resting uncertainly in his lap. The moment he hears your footsteps, his head snaps up.
His entire face changes. The soft, blooming warmth of recognizing someone who has never once feared him. He rises awkwardly, joints stiff, and holds out his hand. As if simply seeing you makes him… lighter.
You smile despite the dread curling in your stomach and place your hand in his. His fingers tremble slightly as they curl around yours, gentle, hesitant, hungry for affection he has yet to understand.
“I couldn’t sleep,” you whisper. “I needed to see if you were all right.”
He leans in closer, studying your face the way most men study scripture. Gently, reverently, as though you contain a truth he has no name for.
“Vi…ctor?” he says, uncertain.
You shake your head, laughing softly. “No. Victor isn’t here. It’s me. Try again- my name.”
You say it slowly, placing your fingertips over his lips to guide the shape. He watches every movement intently, as though learning language is an intimate ritual he wants desperately to master. Before he can try the sound, you lift the small portrait you painted earlier of him, bathed in warm tones of amber and sienna. His expression softens. His thumb brushes the page with something like awe.
“You see?” you say gently. “Beautiful things can come from the dark.”
He looks at you and something unspoken flickers in his eyes. Something young and fragile and aching. Then-
“What in God’s name is this?”
The words slam into the chamber like a thunderclap. You whirl around. Victor stands at the bottom of the stairs, candle in hand, his face hollow and ghostly in the flame’s glow. His hair is disheveled, his collar slack, his breathing unsteady as though he ran the entire way down fueled by panic and fury.
He descends the last steps slowly, deliberately.
“y/n.” he says, voice cracking, “I gave you one rule. One. And yet here you are, again, sneaking into the bowels of my creation as though this were some secret rendezvous.”
Your breath freezes in your chest. “Victor-”
“Do not speak,” he spits, raising a trembling hand. “Not yet. I want to see how far the betrayal goes before you attempt excuses.”
The creature shifts uneasily, stepping toward you with protective instinct. The chain rattles loudly, echoing in the damp chamber.
Victor explodes.
“STAY BACK, YOU ABOMINATION!”
The creature flinches so violently you feel it in your own bones.
“Victor!” you shout. “He didn’t do anything!”
Victor’s laugh is jagged and humorless. “Yes. That much is clear. He never does anything, does he? No wickedness. No rebellion. Not even a voice strong enough to defend you. And yet you cling to him as though he were the last man on earth capable of love.”
Your heart slams painfully in your chest. Victor’s eyes flick to your joined hands. His face contorts.
“With me,” he snarls, grabbing your arm with bruising force. “Now.”
“Victor, stop! Let go!”
He yanks you up the stairs so fast the creature lets out a distressed, strangled gasp behind you. The last thing you see as the door slams is him reaching for you, confused, scared and his chain jolting him back into darkness.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Victor shoves you inside the laboratory, the door slamming like the crack of a gunshot. He moves with a manic energy, pacing like a man at the brink of madness.
“You have undermined me for the last time,” he says, voice shaking. “I have tolerated your softness, your sentimentality, your irrational affection for that creature.”
“He’s not a creature!” you shout. “He’s a man! He thinks, he feels-”
“He mimics feeling,” Victor snaps, whirling toward you. “That is all. He is a collection of dead matter stitched together by my genius and animated by my will. Whatever tenderness you believe you see is merely an echo of human behavior, a ghost of the bodies he was assembled from.”
Your jaw tightens. “You don’t even call him ‘him.’ You call him ‘it.’”
“Because that is what he is!” Victor shouts. “An it. A specimen. A scientific triumph. Not something for you to coddle and cradle like some forbidden lover!”
Heat floods your cheeks. “How dare you even suggest-”
“Oh, but I must,” Victor says, stepping closer, eyes burning. “Because I have seen the way you look at him. With wonder. With tenderness. With devotion you have never once shown me.”
“That isn’t true.”
He laughs a broken, ugly sound. “You kneel beside him as though he were an altar. You bring him your paintings, your sketches, your soul. All those soft, secret things you keep hidden from everyone else, you give them to him.”
You stumble back a step, breath shallow. “Victor, please…”
“You should never have gone to him.” he says, voice trembling around every syllable. “You should never have touched him, or spoken so gently to him, or- or given him pieces of yourself that you have never given to me.”
“Victor, you’re not making sense-”
“I am making perfect sense!” he yells, slamming his hand against the table so hard that glass shatters. “You see him as something precious. Something worthy of your affection. And it disgusts me, it destroys me.”
Your throat tightens. “Victor, please, you’re frightening me.”
He steps closer. Too close. “Good,” he whispers. “Perhaps now you understand what it feels like to watch the person you love turn all their softness toward something else. Something inhuman.”
“You don’t love me like that,” you breathe. “You’re my brother.”
His face contorts with anguish. “That has never stopped love before.”
Your heart drops. Victor takes another step forward, slow, deliberate, like a man walking toward the gallows.
“I built him,” he murmurs, voice breaking. “I brought him from death into life. I gave him existence. And still… still you look at him with a tenderness you deny me. As if he were the first man you had ever seen.”
“That isn’t true,” you whisper, choking on panic. “You’re twisting my words-”
“Am I?” Victor asks softly, deadly. “Then look me in the eye and tell me you don’t feel anything for him.”
You open your mouth, but nothing comes out. And that silence is the final fracture. Victor’s breath catches, a sound halfway between a sob and a gasp.
“God help us both,” he whispers, “but I cannot let him take you from me.”
His hands move before you understand what he intends. Cold fingers clamp around your throat. Your gasp is cut short, strangled into silence as Victor shoves you back against the table, his grip tightening with trembling desperation.
“V–Victor!” you choke, clawing at his wrists. “Please- stop… Victor, stop!”
Tears spill down your face. Not from fear of death but from the devastation of his betrayal. You look at him through blurring vision, begging with your eyes.
“It’s me,” you rasp, voice mangled by pressure. “Victor… it’s me- your sister- please.”
His face collapses with agony, body shaking, but his hands do not loosen.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he whispers, voice hysterically soft. “Don’t. please- I have to do this, don’t you see? If you go back to him, if you keep choosing him-”
Your legs buckle as black dots swarm your vision. You scrape weakly at his arms, tears streaming freely now, your voice a broken whisper through crushed air.
“I trusted you…”
That pierces him. Victor’s eyes go wide, full of horror but full of love.
“I know,” he breathes, his grip tightening in a sudden spasm of panic. “Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive-”
Your consciousness begins to unravel.
Sound distorts and his voice turns distant, watery, fading. Your knees hit the floor. Your hands slip from his wrists. Your tears drip onto the wooden boards. Victor lowers you gently without even realizing, still holding your throat, shaking as though he himself might collapse.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
For several long, paralyzed seconds after your body slumps into stillness, Victor does not breathe. He kneels over you, hands hovering helplessly above your throat as if afraid to touch you again, eyes blown wide with a horror so complete it looks like a second death blooming inside him.
“y- y/n…?” His voice is a fractured, trembling thread. “Please… please open your eyes…”
You do not.
Your body lies limp against the floorboards, cheek pressed to the cold wood, lashes still wet with tears. Your breathing is faint, shallow, thin as silk. But Victor doesn’t know that at first. Not until he presses trembling fingers to your neck and feels the faint flutter of a pulse. He collapses over you in a choked sob of relief.
“Oh God- oh God- thank God-” His voice breaks. “I didn’t mean to- You forced my hand, I swear it, I can’t lose you to him…”
His words tumble over themselves, panicked and senseless, half confession, half fevered justification. He gathers you into his arms like a child cradling a shattered doll, lifting your unconscious body against his chest. You’re weightless to him in this moment, or perhaps he is simply numb, hollowed out by the reality of what he’s done.
Your head falls limp against his shoulder. Your hair brushes his cheek. Victor swallows a broken sound and presses his forehead to yours for a heartbeat, voice shaking violently.
“Forgive me. Please, please forgive me. I can’t live without you. I can’t- I won’t-”
He forces himself upright and carries you through the dim machinery levels and narrow staircase, stumbling with a frantic urgency that borders on delirium. Every few steps he looks down at your face, terrified that the shallow rise and fall of your chest might stop.
He kicks open the door to his bedroom and lays you on his own bed, the only place in the world he considers safe. The candlelight washes over your still features, softening the bruising forming along your throat. Victor’s breath stutters when he sees the marks left by his own hands. He presses a trembling palm to his mouth, choking on guilt and possessive panic entwined too tightly to separate.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers to your sleeping form, voice hoarse and breaking in the middle. “I wish you had never looked at him. I wish you had never smiled at him. I wish I could tear this love from your heart- I wish- I wish…”
His voice dissolves into a painful, wordless sound. He steps back from the bed. As if distance might protect you from him. But the protectiveness returns like a snapping wire, sharp and immediate. He grabs a blanket and tucks it gently around your shoulders, brushing hair from your forehead with the back of trembling fingers.
“You’ll be safe,” he murmurs. “You’ll stay here, and you’ll be safe from him. From everything. From everyone who would take you from me.”
His pupils sharpen with furious resolve. “Even him.”
He rises, wipes his face, shoulders heaving with breaths that don’t calm him. He steps out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. Then his softness ends.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Victor becomes a man possessed, driven by a feverish clarity sharper than madness. He drags tin canisters across the floor, their clanging echoing through the empty industrial belly of the building.
One. Two. Ten. Dozens. He tears open lids with shaking hands and begins pouring gasoline across the floors, the walls, the rafters, each splash accompanied by mutters that spill like prayers twisted into threats.
“You won’t take her from me,” he hisses under his breath, pacing like a predator marking territory. “You’ll never have her. You may wear a man’s face, but you’re not worthy of her. You’re not worthy of breath.”
He dumps another canister, gasoline soaking the machinery, the support beams, seeping into the cracks of the building like poison.
“She’s mine,” he mutters. “My twin. My blood. My other half. Before God, before creation, before you.” His eyes blaze with a feverish devotion.
“She belonged to me first.” Then he turns, jaw set, eyes blazing with resolve and fear and possessive fury.
The sewer reeked of damp stone and stagnant water, a cold subterranean tomb illuminated only by the trembling flame of the lantern Victor clutched with a white-knuckled grip. The creature sat where he always did, yet looking far more like a frightened child than Victor ever allowed himself to admit. His enormous dark eyes lifted at the sound of approaching footsteps, reflecting a gentleness that had no place in the hell he’d been confined to. But tonight, Victor’s steps carried something new, something shaking and violent and threaded with desperation.
He came to a stop only a few feet away, the lantern quivering in his grasp as he tried to steady both his breath and his unraveling sanity. His voice cracked, sharp and feverish as he hissed, “Say one more word. Just one. Let me save you. Just… speak. Prove you’re worth all of this.”
His plea echoed across the stone like a confession he never meant to utter, like the prayer of a man watching his life’s only accomplishment rot in front of him.
The creature only watched him in silence, wide-eyed and confused, as if trying to decipher why Victor trembled so violently tonight. He had known language for mere weeks; he had known compassion for even less time. Everything he’d learned had come in fragments, Victor’s frantic commands, your soft whispered encouragement, the repeated name that he clung to because it made you turn toward him with a smile instead of fear. Victor’s jaw tightened until his teeth ground together. His expression collapsed into disappointment so raw it bordered on grief. Finally, with a sharp exhale, he turned away, boots splashing angrily through the filth.
But then, just as he reached the first step a soft, uncertain voice behind him broke the silence.
“…y/n…?”
It was fragile and breathy, spoken with the hesitance of a child learning how sound worked at all. But it was unmistakable. Victor froze, every muscle in his body seizing with a shock so visceral it looked like pain. Slowly, painfully, he turned back. His expression shifted rapidly, astonishment, then horror, then a fury so poisonous it twisted his features into something monstrous.
“No…” he choked out. “No- NOT that name.”
The creature, sensing Victor’s distress but not understanding its cause, repeated the word even softer this time, reaching out as though speaking your name might call you back to him.
Victor didn’t shout. He didn’t scream. He just went completely still, his face hollowing out as if something inside him had died. And then, without warning, he bolted up the steps with a panic so intense he nearly dropped the lantern in his rush to escape the sound of your name on the creature’s lips.
He burst into the laboratory chest heaving, hands shaking violently. The sight of his work, the books, the instruments, the cracked glass tanks only seemed to drive him further into madness.
“He learned her name,” he raged, grabbing the lantern and smashing it against the stone counter so violently that shards scattered across the floor. “HER name, not words, not thought, but HER.” His breath came in shallow gasps, almost sobs. “He knows the word that belongs to ME. The word that belongs to my blood, my mirror, my other half, my only tether-”
And then his eyes fell on you.
Still unconscious where he’d laid you on his bed, your body soft and peaceful, your hair fanned across the pillow like spilled ink. Your breathing, gentle, struck him like a blade to the gut. He stumbled toward you, collapsing to his knees beside the mattress, reaching out with trembling fingers that hovered over your throat where the darkening marks of his hands faintly showed.
“My sweet girl… my darling sister…” His voice cracked into a broken whisper. “What have I done to you?” Tears gathered in his eyes but did not fall, trapped by pride or madness or both. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I only wanted to keep you safe- safe with me. Safe from him.”
But then his expression hardened like cooling metal. Slowly, he rose to his feet.
“I won’t let him have you,” he murmured, almost lovingly, almost reverently. “Never. Not him. Not ever.”
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Victor moved through the decaying building with eerie determination, every step echoing with the hollow calm of a man who has finally found his purpose, even if that purpose is destruction. He ripped open the last barrels of gasoline, the sharp chemical scent instantly filling the air as he poured the liquid over every wooden surface he could reach. It soaked into the floorboards, seeped down the stairs, dripped between cracks and spread through the lower halls like a shimmering flood of doom.
As he worked, he whispered to himself, each word trembling with feverish conviction.
“I gave him life. I gave him form. I shaped him with my own hands. And he dares- he dares to reach for her? No. No, he won’t. She’s mine. My twin. My heart. My half. No creature of scraps and lightning will ever take her from me.”
He returned to the bedroom drenched in the scent of fuel, his clothes dark and glistening with it. His eyes softened the moment they fell upon you. He approached the bed reverently, brushing a strand of hair from your cheek with fingers that still shook uncontrollably.
“Forgive me,” he whispered, voice breaking. “When you wake… all of this will be over. You’ll be safe. You’ll be mine again.”
Then, with careful, trembling arms, he lifted your limp body against his chest. He held you as though you were made of glass, pressing a kiss to your forehead. And he carried you down into the depths of the building.
The creature lifted his head the moment Victor’s footsteps echoed through the tunnel again. His eyes widened when he saw you in Victor’s arms, your body limp, your head resting on Victor’s shoulder. And a distressed sound escaped him, something pained and bewildered.
Victor pulled you tightly against his chest as if shielding you. “Don’t look at her,” he growled, his voice low and venomous.
The creature moved back instinctively, confusion etched onto every line of his face. He tugged at the chains helplessly, the metal clanking loudly in the narrow stone corridor. Victor stepped closer, lanternlight flickering across his manic expression. His smile was thin, trembling, carved from grief and madness.
“I came down for one reason…” he murmured.
He leaned closer to the creature, so close their breaths almost touched.
“…to watch you die.”
For a single suspended heartbeat, everything was still. And with that, he dropped the lantern.
Then the gasoline ignited. Flames exploded upward in a roaring torrent, slithering across the floor in ravenous streams. They raced up the walls, devoured the low beams overhead, and surged toward the creature with violent, blistering heat. The tunnel became a furnace, the air a suffocating haze of smoke and firelight.
Victor held you tighter, stepping back from the rushing inferno, whispering through clenched teeth, “You’re safe now. He’ll never touch you again. You’ll never belong to anyone but me.”
The creature lunged forward in terror, the chains rattling wildly as he fought against them. He called out, not in anger, not in violence, but in pure desperate fear.
And then, for the first time since the night of his creation he screamed your name.
But this time it was clear. It was pleading, raw with a grief that came from the soul Victor refused to believe he had. Your name echoed through the burning tunnels like a plead, like a vow, like the final cry of a heart being torn in two.
Pairing(s): The Creature/Adam Frankenstein x Fem!Frankenstein twin sister! painter reader.
Warning(s): MDNI!! Slowburn. Really HEAVYYYY yearning from both parties lol. Some descriptions of gore and abuse, disturbing imagery, later chapters will contain smut, a problematic and emotionally manipulative sibling relationship, Victor is weirdly attracted to his sister…
Word Count: 7.8k
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
A storm had been threatening all afternoon, rumbling far out from sea like some enormous animal pacing just beyond the horizon, but inside the towering structure, the atmosphere churned with something far more volatile. You could feel it trembling inside your ribs as Victor finished the last of the stitching, his hands shaking with an excitement he was trying, and failing, to hide. While you stood beside the metal table sketchbook pressed under your arm, staring down at the enormous body he had pieced together from so many dead men and yet made beautiful in his strange, terrible way.
The battery wheels creaked, the storm winds hummed low against the glass, and Victor’s voice broke through the heavy quiet.
“It is done,” he whispered, as if he were in a church and not a half-rotted industrial giant.
“It’s finally finished.”
You exhaled shakily. “So this is the moment,” you murmured, stepping closer to the creature’s stitched chest, your voice trembling between awe and fear. “This is where everything changes, isn’t it?”
Victor didn’t answer with words, he only touched the creature’s cheek as though touching the face of a newborn, ignoring the coldness, ignoring the sewn-together scars, ignoring the memory of every body he harvested to build this single impossible vessel. Another rumble of thunder rolled closer, vibrating the floor beneath your feet. From the far end of the hall, you heard Harlander’s heavy footsteps descending the iron stairs, followed by his smooth, practiced voice echoing beneath the rafters.
“You’ve truly done it, Victor,” he said, the admiration real but edged with something else…something greedy, something hungry. “A perfect structure. A perfect form.”
Victor stiffened, shoulders rising, tension tightening the muscles along his neck in a way you’d learned meant he didn’t trust the intentions in someone’s tone. You could feel the air shift around you as Harlander drew closer, stopping at Victor’s side, looking down upon the creature with a strange glimmer you hadn’t seen before, not some scientific interest but possession.
He leaned in and whispered something to Victor that you didn’t hear, but you saw Victor’s reaction: a slow, sharp recoil.
Then Victor said, low and hard, “No.”
Harlander’s voice came back sharper, “You refuse me? After everything I’ve provided?”
You were confused and Victor turned toward him fully now, voice rising,
“Funding the building was one thing, Henrich, but what you’re asking is impossible- it’s madness-”
You frowned, stepping closer. “Que demande-t-il à Victor?" (What is he asking Victor?)
But he didn’t answer you. He only shot Harlander a furious look and marched toward the stairs leading upward, muttering under his breath. Harlander followed with an expression darkening by the second, and Victor tossed a look over his shoulder.
“I won’t discuss this here. Not in front of her.”
A sharp sting cut through your chest at those words.
You watched them disappear up the spiraling metal staircase, their voices fading into storm-heavy echoes above, and something in the back of your mind tugged, an instinct whispering that whatever Victor refused to say aloud was not something trivial.
A crack of thunder hit so close the walls shuddered. You flinched, and the creature’s enormous silhouette trembled in your peripheral vision as though even the corpse felt the tension.
Minutes passed. Their voices began to rise. Then shout. You looked quickly at the creature, “I will return, everything will be fine.” but you didn’t know if you were trying to convince him or yourself.
That was the moment your instincts twisted into dread, pushing your feet automatically toward the stairs.
You lifted your skirts and climbed quick, breath loud in your own ears as the wind whistled through the slats of the old structure, the storm already beginning to claw its way over the cliff’s edge. You reached the upper platform just in time. Just in time to hear Victor shouting.
“The disease has already spread, Henrich! You are dying- there is nothing for me to save!”
And you froze halfway onto the platform because Harlander turned sharply toward Victor and what you saw shocked you in place. The sudden gust of wind lifted his hair just enough for you to see beneath it. His scalp was bare. Pale. Rotting in patches. You were no doctor by any means but you knew it was Syphilis. Your breath hitched, a small sharp sound that made Harlander whip around to face you. For the first time, you saw his eyes not as polished, charming instruments of social prowess but wild, frantic, desperate.
“You weren’t meant to see this.”
He said it with both shame and fury, turning his gaze to the ground. Victor’s head snapped toward you, shock and frustration cutting through his features.
“You shouldn’t be up here-”
“What is happening!?” you demanded, voice louder than either of theirs for the first time.
Your heart slammed against your ribs. “Victor- did you know? Did he tell you?”
Harlander barked out a broken laugh. “Oh yes, he knows. He knows I’m dying. He knows the disease is inside me- devouring me. But look at what he’s built!”
He gestured wildly toward the creature’s corpse below. “A perfect, powerful vessel- untouched, unspoiled-”
Victor stepped between you and Harlander, voice low and dangerous.
“You think I would put your diseased mind into that body? You think I would corrupt my creation before it has even drawn breath?”
Harlander’s face twisted into something jagged and unrecognizable.
“You promised me resurrection.”
Victor’s voice cracked like a whip. “Not for you!”
The rain grew harsher, the first crackling forks of lightning crawling across the sky only a mile off, throwing white flashes over Harlander’s frenzied expression.
Harlander moved so suddenly you gasped, lunging toward one of the silver rods lying on the ground.
He snatched it up, gripping it like a weapon, holding it over the enormous vertical shaft at the center of the building, the massive drop that led straight down to the chamber hundreds of feet below.
“If I cannot live in that new body,” he hissed, voice trembling, “then I will not let you witness the fruit of your efforts!”
“Herr Harlander, don’t” Victor cried out, stepping forward, “If we lose that, we have nothing. We both lose!”
He jerked back, inches from slipping. “I will be the eagle that feasts on your liver!”
A violent gust of wind struck the platform then, swirling rain and cold salt air around you, whipping your hair across your eyes, and in that moment Harlander’s wig tore free completely, flying off into the storm and exposing the full horror of his scalp. You gasped. Harlander saw the disgust in Victor’s face. Saw the shock in yours.
He took another step back, too close, far too close, to the lip of the shaft. You reached out instinctively, palm outstretched.
“Harlander! Henrich- just give it to me,” you pleaded, voice trembling but steady. “We can talk about this, but you need to come away from the edge- please!”
Your voice softened even as your heart pounded. “You don’t have to die like this.”
For a fraction of a moment, his eyes softened. Just a fraction. But then lightning struck the upper struts of the building with a deafening crack. Harlander flinched and his boot slipped.
The silver rod clanged loudly as it hit the metal floor and then bounced. You watched it in slow motion. Watched it skid. Saw Harlander twist to grab it. Watched his fingers miss. Watched him fall. He didn’t scream. He simply vanished into the enormous black mouth of the shaft, swallowed by the churning machinery far, far below. You staggered forward with a strangled cry, staring into the darkness where he’d disappeared, your voice raw as you shouted.
“HENRICH!”
But there was no sound. No cry. No sign that he was alive...
Victor grabbed your shoulders from behind, pulling you back from the edge as though afraid you might fall too, his voice hoarse, urgent.
“Don’t look, don’t- y/n, come away from there.”
But you kept staring, breath shaking, heart pounding so hard you thought your ribs might crack.
“Victor… he’s dead,” you whispered, the truth wrapping cold fingers around your spine.
Victor swallowed hard, jaw clenching, grief folding into something darker. Then he spoke out words that would surely haunt you for years:
“We have to continue. Before the storm passes.”
You turned to him slowly, disbelief and horror drawn across your face.
“Tu ne peux pas être sérieux, Victor- après ce qui vient de se passer?? Comment peux-tu encore réfléchir à l'essai?" (You can not be serious Victor- after what just happened?? How can you think about the experiment right now?)
His eyes met yours, feverish and unrelenting.
“Car si je m'arrête maintenant… sa mort ne signifie rien." (Because if I stop now… his death means nothing)
Lightning peeled across the sky again, illuminating the creature’s body below, the stitches, the metal rods, the perfect form waiting for life.
And despite the intense fear twisting inside you, despite Harlander’s death still echoing in your bones, you felt something else rise alongside the dread. Something like destiny.
You whispered, “Alors je reste avec toi. Quoi qu'il arrive ce soir… je suis là." (Then I stay with you. Whatever happens tonight… I’m here)
Then he grabbed your hand and took you below.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The storm had raged for hours, a furious, heaving sky that seemed determined to split itself open directly over Victor’s creation. You stood beside him the entire time, drenched to the bone, your face stinging from the wind, rain water flooding the seams of your dress, your heartbeat thrumming like a second storm trapped in your chest. Victor shouted himself hoarse as he worked through the final steps, barking commands at you, at God himself, as though brute force and brilliance alone could make lightning bend to his will.
And then the lightning struck. A violent shudder tore through the structure, the silver rods crackled with white fire, the stitched body jerked once but then fell still.
You saw it immediately, the way Victor’s hope collapsed inside him like a candle snuffed out. He stared down at the body in disbelief, rainwater sliding across his face, making it impossible to tell whether he was crying.
“This isn’t…” he whispered, choking on the breath. “This is not how it’s meant to be.”
“Victor-”
“No.” He stumbled forward, checking for a pulse. “No, no, no- this was supposed to work. It should have worked, I-” He pressed both fists to his temples as if he could crush his own skull to silence whatever was screaming inside it. “I need- I need to think. I need- I can’t be down here, I cannot-”
You reached for him, but he tore himself away and staggered up the stairs, slipping once on wet stone. You watched him disappear, swallowed by the building. For a long time, you didn’t move, looking down at the body on the table. Just… waiting.
You approached him slowly, your breath trembling in the cold, and rested your fingertips against the edge of the table. You studied the sewn seams along his arms and chest, the precision, the care, the horror and beauty intertwined.
“Victor doesn’t know how to wait,” you whispered to the still, stitched figure. “But… I do.”
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Victor woke to a sudden heavy thud, something shifting the air, something too large and too deliberate to be the building settling. He jolted upright in bed, breath ripped from his lungs, heart slamming against his ribs as he saw a shape. A towering silhouette.
A shadow leaned over him, impossibly still, impossibly silent, a child’s posture trapped inside a giant’s frame. The creature’s face, stitched, pale, unevenly lit by morning light hovered next to Victor’s bed. Then Victor let out a yelp. You were halfway down the corridor when you heard it.
“Victor?” you called, voice cracking. “Victor!”
You burst into his room and froze. Because he was standing there…alive. You stepped forward before fear even had time to bloom. Your body moved toward him in pure awe, as though drawn by instinct, reverence, wonder. He turned at the sound of the door and his eyes met yours.
Your breath stuttered once, a flutter of panic, shock, disbelief, but you steadied yourself almost instantly, lowering your voice, softening every line of your body the way one might when approaching a startled animal.
“It’s all right,” you whispered. “You’re- you’re all right.”
Victor scrambled across the floor like something chased, gasping, “Wait get away from him-! Get back y/n-!”
But you barely heard him. The creature’s eyes were enormous, unblinking, filled with a childlike confusion that struck you so sharply it hurt. His stitched chest rose and fell in uneven, rattling breaths. Every muscle in his body was coiled with tension, but not aggression.
He looked terrified. Not terrifying.
You lifted your hands slowly, palms open and watched him copy your movement. You felt your voice steady more.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” you said. “I promise.”
The creature tilted his head, the exact same motion a child makes when trying to understand language without knowing the words. A soft, broken little sound escaped him, more breath than voice. Victor stared at you like you’d lost your mind.
“y/n please step back. It’s- it’s not stable- it shouldn’t be”
“Victor,” you whispered without looking at him, “he was alone when he opened his eyes for the first time. Of course he’s frightened.”
Your brother fell silent, chest heaving.
The creature glanced between the two of you, tremors rippling across his massive limbs. You took one slow step forward. He did not retreat. Instead, he mirrored you, head lowering just slightly, hands hanging helplessly at his sides, eyes wide and pleading in a way you had not expected. Your heart cracked open.
“There you are,” you breathed. “I knew you weren’t a failure.”
He blinked at the sound of your voice, eyes softening just barely, as if he recognized something in your tone, something safe.
Victor, shaking, finally managed to find his voice again.
“I… I didn’t fail,” he whispered, stunned, horrified, ecstatic all at once. “It’s alive. It- it’s actually alive-”
The creature flinched at Victor’s raised voice. You lifted your hand slightly, not touching him, just a gesture.
“It’s okay,” you murmured. “He’s just excited.”
You didn’t know why you were speaking to him as if he understood, or at least you believed he did. The creature took a small step toward you, hesitant and heavy. You felt Victor tense like a threatened animal behind you, but you held your ground, forcing your breath to remain calm, gentle.
“It’s all right,” you said softly. “I’m here.”
Your eyes never left his. For a moment he seemed to recognize your steadiness, your quiet presence, the way you didn’t treat him harshly or as some mistake.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Victor’s shock eventually gave way to exhilaration. Wild, unguarded exhilaration.
“It’s alive,” Victor whispered again, breathless. He laughed, too sharply, too loudly, and the Creature flinched at the sudden sound. Victor didn’t even notice. “I did it. I did it.”
You watched the Creature recoil, hands guarding itself like a frightened animal. The momentary calm you had earned with him trembled on the verge of breaking.
“Victor,” you warned softly. “You’re scaring him.”
But Victor was already scrambling to his feet, pushing past you, grabbing the creature and taking it down the stairs of the building.
You felt dread coil in your stomach.
“Victor… what are you doing?”
“What I have to,” he said, as though it were obvious. He was already reaching for the Creature’s wrists. “Come on. Move. That’s it.”
The Creature didn’t resist at first. He allowed Victor to turn his arm, to examine the seams, to press fingers into the pulse beneath stitched skin. Confusion flickered across his face, but not defiance. When Victor snapped the first iron cuff around his wrist, you stepped forward immediately.
“Victor- stop. He doesn’t understand what you’re doing-”
“It doesn’t need to understand,” Victor snapped. The mania was back in his eyes, bright and feverish. “We need to move fast. It needs to be contained before causing any damage.”
“Contained?” you repeated, a chill prickling your arms. “He just came to life. He’s scared. He’s barely standing-”
“It’s capable of killing both of us if it panics,” Victor hissed, wrenching the other shackle into place. “Help me, will you? Or get out of the way.”
You stood your ground. The Creature let out a distressed groan as the iron chains clattered against the floor, far too heavy for a man only minutes into existence. His body lurched with each tug, balance unsteady, but curious as he inspected the things around him.
“Easy,” you whispered. “Just follow the movement. You’re all right.”
His gaze flicked toward you at the sound of your voice and his breathing eased just slightly. Victor caught the exchange and scoffed.
“Don’t do that,” he muttered.
“Do what?” you shot back.
“Talk to it like it’s a child.”
You stopped walking. The Creature, caught between the two of you, froze as well. You stared at your brother.
“Why do you say it?”
Victor blinked, impatient. “What?”
“You just called him it again.”
He frowned, as though you were being absurd. “Because that’s what it is.”
“No.” Your voice sharpened. “Victor. Look at him.”
The Creature’s wide, confused eyes reflected the dim light of the corridor. His chest rose and fell too fast; his hands twitched as though unsure whether to reach for you or brace himself.
“Look at him,” you repeated, quieter this time.
Victor looked for half a second. Then shut the thought down.
“He’s not a person. He’s a construction. A… function. A proof of concept.” His voice grew brisk, brittle, the tone he used whenever he tried to hide the rot of his own guilt. “I built him. That makes him an it.”
Your stomach twisted.
“Victor, you stitched a heart into his chest. He breathes. He feels. He looked at you like- like a newborn trying to understand the first face he’s ever seen. He’s not an it.’”
Victor’s jaw clenched. “Sentiment will get us killed.”
“Cruelty will destroy him,” you shot back.
For the briefest moment, the Creature turned his head toward you, eyes flickering with some fragile recognition of the kindness in your voice. Victor tugged the chains sharply.
“Move,” he ordered.
The Creature stumbled, nearly falling. You immediately caught his arm, not tightly, not fearfully, but steadying him. His skin was cold and uneven beneath your palms where the stitches crossed muscle. He froze under your touch. Not out of fear but something almost… trusting. Victor saw it. He hated it.
“It needs to be kept below,” Victor insisted. “Somewhere dark. Somewhere controlled. Before anyone else sees it”
“Why below?” you whispered.
“It’s the safest place.”
“For who?” you demanded. “For him, or for you?”
Victor didn’t answer.
You reached out, gently tipping the Creature’s chin so he would look away from Victor and back toward you.
“It’s all right,” you murmured. “You don’t have to be afraid.”
He blinked slowly. A tremble passed through him, not panic, but something softer. A quiet instinct pulling him toward your voice. And Victor tugged the chain hard, pulling the Creature back.
You stepped between them.
Victor stared at you, outraged. “Move.”
“No.” you said simply. “He just opened his eyes, Victor.” Your breath shook with anger and heartbreak. “You promised him life. And the first thing you’re giving him is chains and a sewer?”
“This is not negotiable.”
“It should be.”
Victor’s voice cracked with the edge of panic. “He’s dangerous.”
“He’s scared.”
“He’s unpredictable!”
“You made him!” you shouted, silencing the room.
The Creature flinched at the raised voices again, his massive body curling inward like he wished he could disappear.
You softened immediately, turning back to him, your voice dropping to a whisper.
“No one should wake up alone and caged,” you murmured. “No one.”
Slowly, like a child seeking reassurance, he reached out the smallest bit toward you. Not touching. But wanting to. Your chest tightened painfully. Victor swallowed, anger flickering with something else, something terrified and jealous and deeply human.
“I don’t have time for this,” he rasped. “He stays below. Done.”
You knew you couldn’t stop Victor yet. But you could do something more important. You could make a promise the Creature would understand. You turned to him, soft, steady, gentle enough for even new eyes to read.
“I’ll come back,” you whispered. “I promise you, I’ll come back.”
His breath caught and for the first time since opening his eyes the Creature fought the pull, if only for one step. Because he wanted to stay with you.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Thunder rolled far out at sea, faint and exhausted, as though even the heavens were tired from what had happened. Victor paced the upstairs laboratory like a man trapped inside a cage of his own making. You stood by the long window overlooking the cliff, arms crossed, trying and failing to calm the fury pressing against your ribs. Victor stopped only when you finally spoke.
“I can’t believe you chained him,” you said, your voice quiet but sharp enough to cut. “You chained him like a monster.”
Victor exhaled harshly. “I chained it like a precaution.”
“That’s not what it looked like.”
“Well, perhaps you didn’t see what I saw.” He turned toward you, eyes still wild from the thrill and terror of his accomplishment. “It’s capable of great strength. Of violence. I could sense it.”
“No.” You stepped toward him. “You feared it. That’s different.”
“Fear is rational,” Victor snapped.
“Not when it replaces humanity.”
Victor flinched slightly, but enough for you to see that your words had struck the bone he didn’t want exposed. He turned away again, rummaging through instruments, breaking the silence with metal clinking and drawers slamming as if noise could shield him from the truth.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” he said tightly.
You stared at him. “Why not? I was there. I saw him wake up. I was the one he trusted.”
“That’s the problem.” Victor spun back toward you, the accusation sharp in his voice. “It shouldn’t trust you.”
You blinked. “What?”
“You can’t form attachments with it.”
“With him,” you corrected immediately.
Victor’s jaw clenched. “Stop calling it that. He is a designed outcome. A creation. A function of my work.”
You scoffed. “You gave him a body and a heartbeat, Victor, not a purpose.”
“He is not a person!”
“He looked at you like one.”
He threw his hands onto the table, gripping its edge as if he might break it in two. “He looked at me like an animal looks at fire, terrified and instinctive.”
“And he looked at me like… like he was trying to understand.”
Victor froze. You hadn’t meant to speak so honestly, but it was too late to pull the truth back. When he finally spoke, the jealousy was unmistakable.
“Be careful,” he said quietly, “or it will understand the wrong things.”
You held his gaze. “No, Victor. He will understand whatever he is shown.”
Victor stared at you, breathing hard. “Do not go to it.”
You didn’t respond. You didn’t promise anything. And Victor knew it.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The iron door leading down to the sewer was heavy. The brass lock felt cold beneath your fingertips as you turned it, slipping inside without a sound. The descent was steep, the stone steps narrow and slick. Candlelight flickered weakly along the walls, casting long shadows that moved like restless spirits.
You heard him before you saw him. Not words, not yet, but soft, rhythmic breaths mixed with the occasional low, unsettled sound. Like someone dreaming without knowing what dreams were. You stepped into the chamber.
He was chained to a thick cement block, both wrists held down, and ankles locked in place, but giving him enough room to stand and roam around.
He lifted his head the moment you entered. And the moment his eyes found you his entire body eased, tension dropping from his shoulders like a heavy cloak being lifted. Your breath caught. Slowly, hesitantly, he leaned forward, as if making sure you were real.
You whispered, “Hello.”
He let out a trembling, almost relieved sound. You approached, lowering yourself to the floor beside him. The chain clinked faintly as he shifted toward you, careful, unsure of how close he was allowed to be. You nodded encouragingly. He inched nearer. Then nearer.
Until he sat only a foot away, still watching you with those wide, searching eyes.
“I’m sorry Victor brought you here,” you murmured.
His brows knit. His lips parted, silently forming shapes he didn’t know how to give sound yet. You placed your hand on the stone floor between you, palm open, an offering, not a command. His gaze dropped to it.
Slowly… slowly… he lifted his hand. He didn’t take yours; he didn’t yet understand that. But he touched the floor where your fingers rested, his touch careful, reverent, as if afraid he might break the world by pressing too hard. Your heart ached.
You spent nearly an hour with him, speaking softly, letting him listen to the sound of your voice, letting him grow used to your presence.You explained simple things:
“This is a candle, it's hot.”
“This is stone.”
“This is water, you can drink it.”
“And this… this is a hand.”
You gently held up your own. He watched you intently.
You repeated softly, “Hand.”
He looked from his own stitches to yours, then back again. Then, very slowly, he lifted his hand again. Your breath caught. This time, he didn’t touch the floor beside yours. He touched you. Huge, trembling fingers brushed your palm, tracing the shape, the warmth, the living pulse beneath the skin as if trying to memorize it. He let out a soft sound, wonder, fear, something between.
You whispered, “That’s right… this is my hand.”
He curled one finger around yours. Just one, but the gentleness of it nearly broke you. After a long silence, he shifted a little, pointing to himself with a confused, questioning noise.
“Victor,” you said gently, tapping your chest near your heart the way he had. “He’s Victor.”
He repeated the gesture, tapping his chest again.
“No…” You shook your head softly. “Not Victor. You’re… you.”
He blinked. You tapped your chest.
“My name is-”
But something made you stop. The first name he learned should have been yours. Not Victor’s. Not the name of the man who chained him underground in the dark.
So you tried again, slowly, clearly.
“My… name…” You tapped your chest again. “-is y/n.”
He watched your mouth, your hands, every movement. And then he tried to echo the sound. Your name, distorted, incomplete, barely more than breath. Your heart clenched so hard it almost hurt. You smiled, eyes stinging.
“Yes,” you whispered. “That’s me. That’s my name.”
He made the sound again, trying harder, shaping it with more precision even if he didn’t fully understand its meaning yet. He wanted to please you. He wanted you to be the first thing he understood.
And when you whispered softly, “It’s all right, you did well…”
He reached for your hand again. Not hesitantly but because he wanted contact with you.
Because you were safety, the first kindness he had ever known. And in the dim, candle-lit shadows of that underground chamber you felt the first fragile thread of something dangerous and beautiful begin to pull tight between you.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Time did not move normally inside the cliffside building. Days became pale ghosts, gray and damp with fog rolling through the broken windows; nights became hours of rain-slick metal and the echo of the wheels grinding endlessly below. And in that timeless blur, the Creature learned exactly one thing:
“Victor.”
That was his word. Victor had demanded it the very first day.
“Say it,” he’d barked, leaning over the chained giant as if intimidation might force language into a newborn. “My name. Say it. Say Victor.”
And the Creature had tried, clumsy and hoarse, shaping the sound like a child learning to breathe for the first time.
“Vic… tor.”
Victor’s pride had been immense for a full thirty seconds. Then reality came crashing in, he said nothing else. For weeks. Victor repeated exercises, pointed to objects, mimicked movements, yet the Creature only repeated the name with soft, desperate longing.
“Victor.” “Victor.” “Victor…”
Sometimes it sounded like a plea. Sometimes like a prayer. But never anything more. And while Victor began to hate his own name, you took a different approach. Every few days, when Victor was upstairs reviewing notes or hunched over blueprints, you would slip quietly down the narrow stone staircase into the sewer chamber with your sketchbook tucked under your arm.
He always heard you before he saw you. The chain rattled faintly, a gentle alert. Then those brown, sorrowful eyes lifted toward you the moment your silhouette appeared. His whole face softened.
“Victor?” he would try.
“No,” you would whisper with a smile. “Not Victor. It’s me.”
You would say your name slowly, enunciating each syllable, touching your chest. “y/n.”
He tried. He always tried. It never came out right. But what he lacked in letters, he made up for in devotion.
The first time you showed him a charcoal sketch of his profile, drawn with reverence, with detail so careful it bordered on affection, he stared for nearly three full minutes without blinking. He lifted one stitched hand. Touched the charcoal shading of his jaw. Then touched his own. His eyes widened in a slow, astonished understanding.
“That’s you,” you whispered. “See? This is you.”
He touched the drawing again, then your hand, then the drawing again as if asking permission to believe it.
“That’s you,” you repeated more gently. “I see you.”
And he made the smallest sound, somewhere between wonder and gratitude as if no one had ever seen him before. You brought more the next week, a watercolor of the light falling on his shoulder, a quick ink study of his hands, a series of tiny sketches of his eyes. He devoured each one like a starving man who had suddenly been handed beauty. Sometimes you caught him staring at you instead of the portrait, as if trying to memorize the way your fingers held the brush, the way your lips moved when you explained things, the way your gentleness wrapped the room in warmth.
Victor noticed.
Oh, he noticed.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
It began quietly.
He would find you missing and discover you in the sewers, laughing softly as the Creature dipped a brush in pigment and smeared it across a spare piece of canvas like a child proud of a mess he had made. Victor stood in the doorway, jaw clenched.
“He can’t even say any other word,” he snapped one evening, startling both you and the Creature. “But you’re teaching him to paint?”
You kept your voice calm. “Painting helps him understand shapes. Emotion. Expression.”
“It’s frivolous.”
“It’s human.”
The Creature flinched at Victor’s tone, shrinking back as if the volume itself caused him pain. Victor’s eyes sharpened. “He responds to me, not you.”
You raised a brow. “He only says your name because you drilled it into him.”
Victor stepped closer, voice darkening. “So then why does he look at you like that?”
You blinked.
“Like what?”
“Like you matter more than I do.”
Your breath caught. And Victor realized he’d said too much. But instead of stepping back, he stepped closer, much closer. His voice dropped to a near-whisper, the kind that sends frost up the spine.
“In every sense that mattered,” he murmured. “Mother’s death. Father’s neglect. William being taken from us. All of it… it was you and me. You stayed by me when the world had no room for me.”
You swallowed. “Victor-”
“You are my twin,” he said more fiercely. “The other half of my life. My mind. My grief. All of this-” He gestured wildly at the laboratory above, the creation chained below. “Every discovery I’ve ever fought for began with us. You and me. Not him.”
Your heartbeat tightened painfully. “Victor.” you tried again, “I care about you. I’ve always cared about you.”
“But not like you care about him.”
You froze.
Victor’s eyes burned, frantic and wounded and something else, something terribly wrong in its intensity, that desperate familial devotion that blurred every boundary.
“He is nothing,” Victor whispered, voice shaking. “A collection of pieces. A thing. A project. And yet you… you look at him with gentleness you never give me.”
“That isn’t true.”
“Yes, it is.”
You took a breath. “Victor, he’s alone. Confused. He needs-”
“J'ai besoin de toi." (I need you)
The chain clinked behind you as the Creature instinctively shifted forward, sensing the tension, your distress. Victor shot him a glare sharp enough to slice through bone.
“Il n'a besoin de rien de vous," (He needs nothing from you) Victor hissed. “Il ne comprend même pas ce que tu es." (He doesn’t even understand what you are)
You turned fully toward Victor, anger flaring. “Et vous? Après toutes ces années, me comprenez-vous vraiment?" (And you do? After all these years, do you really understand me?)
Victor’s expression flickered, hurt mixed with panic. The Creature made a soft, confused sound, reaching one hand toward you. Your name- almost. Victor stiffened as though stabbed.
“He said your-” he choked on it, “-he tried to say your name.”
Your breath trembled. You hadn’t realized he’d been listening closely enough to know.
Victor’s voice dropped to a whisper, furious and terrified. “Tu étais censé être à moi." (You were supposed to be mine)
You stepped back. “Tu es mon frère," (You’re my brother) you said softly. “Pas mon gardien." (Not my keeper)
But Victor heard only betrayal.
The creature watched you with devastated eyes. He didn’t understand Victor’s words. He didn’t understand the jealousy. He didn’t understand family or history or grief. But he understood one thing with painful clarity: You were upset. And Victor was the cause.
He tugged the chain once- hard. The metal screaming against the bolt. You stepped toward him quickly, hand raised.
“No,” you said softly. “It’s all right. I’m all right. I’m right here.”
He settled instantly. Victor saw it and he snapped.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The day had already been tense, Victor had been pacing the laboratory floor for hours, muttering to himself about phonetics and nerve conductivity and “wasted weeks,” while you sat on a high stool cleaning paint from your brushes, trying not to think about the creature’s soft, child-like “Victor…” echoing faintly from the sewer grates below.
Then came the knock, sharp, unexpected, echoing through the entire hollow-bellied structure.
Victor froze mid-stride, shoulders locking. “No one comes here,” he whispered.
The knock came again, louder. And then, a familiar voice, breathless from the wind off the cliff:
“Victor? It’s William! Please, open the door!”
You and Victor exchanged a startled look, his expression flickering through shock, dread, and a very specific frustration, because he knew he could not allow Elizabeth anywhere near the creature.
He rushed to unbolt the heavy iron door. Elizabeth burst in first, cheeks flushed from the sea air, followed by William who looked equally worried and very out of breath. “y/n,” Elizabeth said, gripping both your hands the moment she reached you, “we’ve come because no one has heard from Harlander in over a fortnight, and you- both of you were the last to see him, yes?”
Victor answered for you, smile strained, forced, too quick. “He… left in good spirits. I’m sure he simply traveled. He had many interests.”
He nudged William sharply. “Come with me- upstairs. I’ll show you my latest notes. It may put your mind at ease.”
William blinked. “My mind-? Victor, Elizabeth asked-”
But Victor clapped a hand on William’s shoulder and physically steered him toward the spiral stairwell. “Notes, William. Now.”
Elizabeth moved to follow, but you gently caught her arm.
“Elizabeth,” you whispered, “wait.”
She turned to you, startled. “y/n? What is it?”
You swallowed, choosing your words carefully, because this was dangerous and Victor would not forgive you for this. But Elizabeth deserved the truth.
“There’s something Victor hasn’t told you,” you said softly. “Something about Harlander. Something about… what he did down below.”
Elizabeth’s brows knit together, the anxiety she’d been holding back spilling forward. “Down below?”
“If you trust me,” you said, “come with me. Quietly.”
Her hand tightened around yours. “Show me.”
Together, you moved down the dim stairway leading to the sewer chambers. The candle in your hand cast trembling light onto the stone walls as Elizabeth whispered shakily, “What on earth is Victor keeping in a place like this…?”
When you reached the bottom, the creature was crouched in a corner, enormous hands buried in his lap, the chain around his wrists clinking softly. At the sound of your steps, he lifted his head, slowly, cautiously and his mismatched eyes shimmered in the lantern glow.
Elizabeth gasped. Stepped back. Pressed a hand to her chest.
“Oh… oh God,” she whispered, voice cracking, “Victor made- this…?”
You knelt a little so the creature wouldn’t feel crowded. “He isn’t dangerous, Elizabeth, he’s just… confused. He doesn’t know why he’s chained here. He doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong.”
The creature stared at Elizabeth, not with hostility but a kind of wary curiosity. Then, as if remembering what he’d practiced, he murmured the only word he knew well:
“…Victor…”
Elizabeth’s stare broke. Tears filled her eyes instantly. She covered her mouth.
“He knows Victor’s name,” she whispered. “He says it like he’s—afraid.”
You exhaled. “He learned it before anything else. He tries so hard. Victor just… refuses to see him.”
Elizabeth wiped her cheek quickly, trying to regain her composure. “We have to speak to him. Now.”
You nodded, and together you climbed the stairs again.
When you reached the laboratory, William and Victor were bent over a scattering of diagrams, Victor speaking far too enthusiastically, clearly trying to distract him.
“Victor,” Elizabeth said sharply.
He looked up, the color draining from his face when he saw tears in her eyes.
“The man. The man downstairs… Is he a patient? A victim?”
“You saw him?” he demanded, voice darkening.
“Yes, with y/n,” she said. “In your sewer.”
Victor’s nostrils flared; his hand curled into a fist.
William blinked. “The- sewer?”
“Victor, you chained him. In the dark. Alone. Like some violent dog. How could you? You, of all people- you should know better.” Elizabeth spit out.
“It is not a he,” Victor snapped. “It is an it. A construction. A specimen.”
You stepped in front of Victor before Elizabeth could answer. “He speaks, Victor. He feels. He looks for you every time he hears footsteps.”
“And says your name like a frightened child,” Elizabeth added.
Victor froze, stiff with cold fury, but forced his expression into something smooth, calculated.
“Very well,” he said icily. “If you insist on judging something you do not understand, come see the creature properly.”
He moved toward the stairs with an air of theatrical pride he didn’t truly feel. “All of us.”
You noticed how he placed himself at the front, like a guide leading admirers toward a masterpiece, only the set of his shoulders betrayed the truth: he was terrified.
In the sewer, the creature looked over curiously when everyone entered.
William made a helpless sound in his throat. “Victor… you- you did it…”
Victor smiled thinly. “Yes. A marvel, isn’t he?”
Elizabeth looked sick. “A marvel doesn’t need a chain around its wrists.”
Victor lifted his chin. “He’s too strong. He doesn’t understand obedience yet.”
“He understands fear,” you said quietly.
The creature’s gaze slid to you, softening, the chain clinking as he leaned closer to hear your voice. “Victor…” he murmured again.
Victor’s jaw clenched. “He only knows that word because I am his creator.”
Elizabeth shook her head.
“No, Victor. He says it like he’s begging you for something.”
Victor snapped, “He is not begging!”
You stepped closer, placing your hand gently on the creature’s shoulder, meeting Victor’s eyes across the dim chamber.
“He just wants you to see him, Victor. Not as it, As him.”
Victor glared at you. “We’re done here,” he said coldly. “William, Elizabeth- you’ve seen enough. Go back upstairs before you interfere further with things you cannot comprehend.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth but William tugged her gently.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Let him… cool off.”
Elizabeth glanced back at the creature once more. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to him. “You didn’t deserve this.”
Then she squeezed your hand. “Stay with him, y/n. God help him if you don’t.”
You nodded silently as they left. Victor lingered at the top of the stairs, staring down at you, at the creature leaning instinctively toward your touch, and his expression was something raw, something jealous, something wounded and furious all at once.
“Tu n'aurais pas dû lui montrer." (You shouldn’t have shown her) he said quietly, dangerously.
“Elle méritait de voir," (She deserved to know) you answered.
And he looked at you then the way a drowning man watches someone reach for another lifeboat.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Something was going to happen. Something terrible. Soon. You’d spent the day trying to ignore it, painting halfheartedly in the upper hall, listening to the grinding of gears as Victor adjusted some monstrous copper device, pretending you didn’t see the way he watched you whenever you left the lab, pretending you didn’t notice the way his pacing sharpened, like a man planning an escape… or a disaster. But as the sky flushed purple and the first cold wind swept through the broken windows, the fear in your stomach tightened to a knot.
You found yourself walking toward the lower stairwell without thinking, candle held gently in your hand. And as always, the moment you reached the last step, he looked up, your creature, head lifting slowly from his knees, eyes catching lantern light like wet glass. His entire face softened when he saw you. Every time.
He had no words yet except Victor’s name, but the sound he breathed out now wasn’t a word, just a warm exhale, soft and relieved. He was happy you were here.
“Hello,” you whispered, stepping closer. “Sorry I’m late tonight.”
His fingers curled on the floor, as if trying to pull himself subtly closer without breaking the chain’s limit. You set the candle down and knelt, feeling the cool stone seep into your nightgown. His eyes followed the movement like a child learning shapes, like he could trace the outline of your form from memory.
“Victor’s been… strange,” you murmured, brushing hair back from your face. “Worse than usual. I think something’s… wrong.”
The creature tilted his head, slow and deliberate, studying your worry like it was a painting he needed to understand. His hands shifted toward you in that hesitant, gentle way he always used like he feared breaking you. You offered your hand and he took it. Carefully. As if your bones were glass.
And you felt the way he relaxed the moment your skin touched his, shoulders easing, breath deepening, a soft tremor settling out of his frame. You breathed out too.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” you whispered. “But I feel like something is ending. Or about to.”
His brows furrowed. He leaned in closer, searching your eyes as if he could stop whatever hurt you simply by looking hard enough.
You smiled, broken and small. “I don’t want you to worry. I just… I didn’t want to be alone tonight.”
That, he understood. Because he lifted your hand slowly, pressing it to his cheek, tentative, questioning. You froze, caught between surprise and the tender ache building in your chest.
His skin was warm. Warmer than it should’ve been. Alive.
“y… y/n,” he tried, breathy, strained. But it broke halfway, and frustration flickered across his face.
Your eyes widened. “You- you tried to say my name.”
He blinked, ashamed he hadn’t managed it.
“No- no, don’t look like that,” you whispered urgently, pulling his face gently toward yours. “That was perfect. More perfect than you know.”
He stared at you with an expression so raw, so open, your heart nearly broke from the force of it.
“You’re learning,” you said. “you’re more than Victor ever let himself see.”
His breath deepened, chest rising and falling like a tide. And then slowly, he leaned closer, forehead touching yours. You didn’t move away. You couldn’t. The closeness felt like gravity, soft, inevitable.
“You make me feel like…” You swallowed. “Like none of this is as frightening as it should be.”
He shifted again, closer still, eyes lowering to your lips then lifting instantly as if embarrassed by the instinct, but you felt it.
The innocence to understand comfort, tenderness… you.
“I wish…” Your voice cracked. “I wish I could take you away from all this.”
His fingers brushed your cheek hesitantly, trembling, the way someone touches light for the first time. You leaned into it. Slowly. Deliberately.
“I don’t know what Victor’s planning,” you whispered. “But I know he’s planning something terrible. And I just… I don’t want tonight to be the last time I see you.”
His brows pulled together, fear, confusion, sadness all tangled in one expression so heartbreakingly human your throat tightened.
Then he did something he’d never done before, he slowly pulled you into him. Not roughly. Not possessively. Just… enveloping you, arms around your shoulders, chin touching the top of your head, as if he’d been born knowing how to hold you this way, as if he thought you might disappear if he didn’t. You melted into his chest, breath caught, eyes burning.
“I’m here,” you whispered into him. “I’m here with you.”
His hand moved to your back in slow calming motions, hesitant at first, then firmer when he realized you welcomed it. You felt needed in a way Victor never allowed you to be. Eventually, you drew back just enough to look at him.
“Whatever happens,” you said softly, “I promise I’ll come back tomorrow. I promise I won’t leave you alone.”
His eyes were full of something so intense, so gentle, so unnameable you couldn’t breathe. You could’ve kissed him. God, you almost did but fear stopped you, the fear that you would make a promise you couldn’t keep.
So instead you pressed your hand to his heart and he slowly covered it with his own, enormous palm dwarfing yours, holding it there like a vow. And the air around you whispered with the storm rolling in.
Pairing(s): The Creature/Adam Frankenstein x Fem!Frankenstein twin sister! painter reader.
Warning(s): MDNI!! Slowburn. Really HEAVYYYY yearning from both parties lol. Some descriptions of gore and abuse, disturbing imagery, later chapters will contain smut, a problematic and emotionally manipulative sibling relationship, Victor is weirdly attracted to his sister…
Word Count: 4.2k
Author’s Note: So funny thing, I was actually writing most of this on the plane ride back home the day AFTER thanksgiving, so I may have overindulged a tinyyyy bit 🤗 Enjoy!
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The days leading up to the move unfold with a slow, crushing inevitability, every hour filled with noise, clutter, and the constant movement of bodies as Victor orchestrates the uprooting of your home with the relentless precision of a man building his own cathedral. Crates stack against the walls like miniature towers, fabrics spill from half-packed trunks, medical instruments clatter against each other as they’re wrapped and rewrapped because Victor dislikes the way a single scalpel sits against its neighbor, and you can’t walk from one room to the next without brushing against the sleeve of some hired man lifting a box onto his shoulder.
You try to keep the same pace. You gather your paints, your pigments, your stacks of canvases, some still blank, others holding half-formed worlds.
Victor watches you at one point as you wrap your brushes in linen, and though you expect him to say something dismissive, something practical, he instead touches one of the brushes with the tip of his finger and murmurs, “Bring all of them… I want you to keep painting, even when we’re there.”
It’s not an apology. But it’s a peace offering and you accept it.
On the third morning, well before sunrise, you stand outside the house with Victor as the carriage pulls up. The mist rolls low and cold, softening the cobblestones, and your breath shows in the air. Victor climbs in beside you, rubbing his hands together, and though his expression seems sharp and focused, he has the exhausted, hollow-eyed look of someone who hasn’t slept in days. He keeps glancing at you, as if checking that you’re still there.
Harlander arrives moments later, tall and unbotheredly elegant in a charcoal coat that looks entirely inappropriate for the hour, followed closely by William, who lifts his eyebrows at the sight of you both and says with a soft laugh, “You two look like you’ve been awake for a week.”
Victor answers flatly, “I have.”
Harlander smirks. “Progress waits for no man, not even one with your constitution, Frankenstein.”
William leans toward you, lowering his voice. “Are you nervous?” You consider lying, but something honest slips out instead.
“I think I’m being more… cautious.” He smiles sympathetically. “Better than trembling in fear, I suppose.”
Victor hears this and his hand finds yours with an abruptness that startles you.
“I told you already,” he says in a low voice that barely reaches over the rumbling carriage wheels, “nothing will happen to you, nothing will ever happen to you while I’m beside you. I don’t intend to let this supposed miracle come at the cost of the one person I can’t replace.”
And before you can answer, the silhouette of the power station rises from the fog like an iron giant waking in the dawn.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The building is huge, monstrous, the kind of structure that feels like it shouldn’t exist in the natural world, the stone dark with moisture and age, the metal pipes twisted along its exterior like the bones of something long dead. It towers over the rushing water beneath it, supported by beams that look too old to still last.
“Dear God,” William murmurs, blinking upward. “It’s uglier than I remember.”
Victor steps forward with something like awe in his eyes. “No,” he whispers. “It’s perfect.”
When Harlander pushes open the doors, the hinges squeal in protest, and dust spills down from the frame. The interior is made of endless stone, broken windows, beams crossing overhead, enormous machines left dormant for years. The empty space echoes every footstep, every exhale, every uncertain shift of weight.
“Here,” Harlander says, stepping into the center of the room, “is where men have worked tirelessly trying to control the elements. Water. Steam. Electricity. The work of ages.” He turns, offering a faint, knowing smile. “Now it will serve something greater.”
Victor walks deeper into the shadows, his bootsteps ringing out. “This place,” he says, stopping beneath one of the beams, “has the structure I need.”
“And soon,” Harlander adds, “the power.”
William shoots you a look of disbelief. You give him a helpless shrug. You’re all in this now.
The following days unravel into one long stretch of sweat and ceaseless activity. Huge metal coils are hauled into the building by gangs of men, clanging loudly as they are bolted into place; sparks fly from the welding of frames; the floor vibrates with every hammer strike; enormous pulley systems groan overhead as they’re tested. Steam hisses. Tools clatter. Victor doesn’t simply direct the workers, he moves them with feverish intensity, adjusting a coil here, marking a measurement there, whispering to himself as he sketches circuits across the chalkboard in strokes so confident they seem carved in stone.
You’ve never seen him so awake. So alive.
William often stays near you as you sit on crates or scaffolding, sketchbook propped on your knees, pencil flying across the page as you capture the architecture of the machinery, the curve of stone, the way dust blooms where sunlight filters through the broken windows.
“You’re really drawing all of it,” William says, leaning over your shoulder one afternoon. “Every little thing.”
You shrug lightly. “If I’m going to witness something like this, I might as well imprint every piece of it.”
William smirks. “You sound like him.”
You shoot him a look. “I do not.”
He laughs quietly. “You do when you look like that, determined, your brow furrowed and your whole body leaning forward as though the world might end if you get one line wrong. It’s exactly what he looks like when he works.”
You don’t know how to answer that, so you simply keep shading the far coil until Harlander’s voice surprises you from behind.
“You have a rare talent,” he says, stepping around you, his eyes sweeping over your sketch. “Most artists capture what they prefer to see. You capture what is, and you manage to make the truth look… elegant. Almost inviting.”
You blink, taken aback by the compliment. “I just draw what I observe.”
Harlander’s smile deepens. “Observation is the foundation of genius.”
William snorts. “Then she’s the only sane genius here.”
Harlander ignores the jab, folding his hands behind his back. “Your brother is fulfilling his destiny, Miss Frankenstein. And you are recording it. Perhaps more faithfully than anyone else ever will.”
The words settle uneasily in your stomach. But you keep drawing. Sometimes Victor passes by your side and pauses, wiping sweat from his hairline with the back of his arm, leaning over your shoulder with an intensity that still startles you even after all these years. He says things like: “Your eyes see better than mine do. You’re catching the angles I miss.”or, “If the world could see what you see, maybe they would understand why all of this is necessary.”
And once, in a moment so quiet you almost believe you imagined it, he whispers: “Tu rends ce lieu cruel sacré." (You make this cruel place look holy) You swallow hard, because you don’t have the words to answer that.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
You watch silently as workers climb tall wooden scaffolds to bolt heavy iron plates into the walls, as glass cylinders and metal tanks are arranged in deliberate positions that Victor insists are crucial to his design, as the sound of hammers and shouted instructions echo beneath the arching stone ceiling like a harsh, metallic hymn. You hover at the doorway with your sketchbook open, trying to capture every detail, your pencil flying faster than your thoughts.
William passes behind you again, he had been doing this so many times you began to lose count, and pauses leaning over your shoulder with a soft smile that carries faint amusement.
"You truly never stop," he says with a soft chuckle. "You work faster than half the crew. I’m convinced you’ll have the entire laboratory sketched before Victor even finishes assembling his first contraption."
You smile faintly, your pencil never pausing. “Someone has to document the madness,” you reply. “And if I stop, I’ll miss something important. Everything is changing so quickly.”
William hums in agreement. "That’s Victor for you. He builds entire worlds inside his head before the rest of us have even understood the first idea.” He glances toward your brother fondly. "Still… it is good, the way you believe in him. He needs that."
Not long after, Harlander strides across the stone floor, boots echoing sharply. He evaluates the room with a critical eye before stopping beside you, hands clasped behind his back.
"Your brother’s mind is a force to be reckoned with," he remarks. "I’ve seen generals who hesitate more than he does when faced with the impossible."
You close your sketchbook briefly and offer a polite nod. “Victor has always been… uncompromising when he wants something,” you say. “Even as a boy he believed the rules were made for other people.”
Harlander’s mouth tilts in a small, knowing smile. "And you? Do you believe in his grand endeavor?"
You hesitate, then answer honestly. “I believe in him. And that is enough for now.”
"A rare loyalty," he says approvingly. "And a dangerous one." His gaze flicks to your unfinished drawing. "You have talent. An eye for detail. Should you ever wish to display your work, I imagine you’d have no shortage of admirers."
You shift awkwardly and murmur a quiet thank-you, though a spark of pride warms your chest. Hours pass and the noise becomes too much. So you slip out.
The cliff path behind the building is narrow and carved by years of harsh wind, and as you descend toward the echoing thunder of the waves, you feel the tension loosen from your shoulders. The air grows colder, sharper, filled with the brine of the sea. When you reach the bottom where the ground levels into a rocky strip of sand you pause, breath catching at the sight. You kneel by the shoreline, setting down your art case and pulling out your paints.
The sky is gray with hints of lilac, the kind of light your mother used to call “the hour of soft truths.” You swallow.
“You would have loved this place maman…” you whisper to the wind, your voice barely audible over the crash of the tide. “You would have scolded me for choosing such cold rocks to sit on, but you would have loved it.” Your hand trembles as you begin to paint.
The strokes come easily, almost automatically. You paint the cliff rising like a dark spine, the laboratory perched high above like a brooding fortress. The scene feels alive beneath your brush, every wave and stone a piece of your memory made external. A tear slips onto your cheek before you have time to wipe it away.
“I miss you,” you murmur hoarsely. “I miss the way you taught me to see the world… not just look at it.”
The wind answers by tugging strands of hair loose from your updo, the ocean spraying your hands and soaking the hem of your skirts. You paint faster, letting your grief bleed into the canvas until your heart feels scraped clean. When you finally stop, the tide has crept dangerously close, and your fingers are numb from the cold. You pack your supplies and climb back up. Inside the laboratory, the workers have gone home for the night. Only Victor, William, and Harlander remain, standing near one of the tall tables where papers and diagrams are strewn like an exploded library.
Victor spots you first.
"You were gone an awfully long time," he says as he approaches, his tone laced with gentle reprimand. "I was beginning to worry you’d wandered too far down the rocks. The tide here is vicious, you could’ve easily slipped.”
You shrug out of your coat and reply, “I needed air. And distance. And quiet. The noise… it presses on you after a while.”
Victor’s eyes drop to the painting peeking from beneath your arm. "You painted?" he asks softly, something warm brightening his expression. "May I see?"
You hesitate only briefly before handing it over. Victor studies the canvas in silence, his brow furrowing not with criticism but with something like awe.
"You’ve made the place look almost… mythic," he murmurs. "Not cold or forbidding. Alive. As if the work we are doing here belongs to something greater than the world outside.” He looks up at you. "How do you do that? How do you take broken machinery and sea-soaked stone and make it feel like a cathedral?"
William steps closer, smiling warmly. "She always had that gift," he says. "You forget how much of Mother’s talent she inherited.”
Harlander nods in agreement. "If you ever wished to exhibit your art formally, you would take Paris or all of Europe by storm."
You flush, scratching your head.
“I only paint what I feel,” you say quietly. “Even when it hurts.”
Victor sets the painting down gently and takes your hands, his voice dropping to a near-whisper.
"You will paint everything," he says. "Every stage of what I build here. I want it recorded, not through diagrams, not through notes but through your eyes. I trust your vision more than my own.”
Your throat tightens. “You really want that?”
"More than anything."
And for the first time since the project began, the fear within you shifts.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The days that follow become a blur of wind, salt, metal, and feverish ambition, as if time itself begins to stretch thin inside the stone belly of the building, bending under the weight of Victor’s obsession. You stay almost constantly at his side, sometimes standing close enough that your sleeve brushes his, other times perched on the upper balconies with your sketchbook open on your knees, watching him like a lone star burning at the very center of a storm he created.
And then, one gray morning, the corpses arrive.
The first cart rattles through the heavy double doors so early that the sun has only begun to stain the horizon pink, and the cold inside the building seems to deepen as the bodies are unloaded one by one, wrapped in stiff canvas, the shapes beneath unmistakably human despite the anonymity the cloth tries and fails to provide.
You freeze, breath catching. Victor doesn’t.
Harlander, standing beside him with his arms folded, observes the scene with an unsettling mixture of curiosity and calculation, as though the bodies are not bodies but investments.
Victor turns to you then, his eyes shining with a fever-bright light that makes your stomach twist.
"You don’t have to watch," he murmurs, though every fiber of him hopes you do. "I would understand if-"
“I’m staying.” Your voice barely wavers, but your heart does.
He exhales, relieved, almost grateful, then kneels beside the first canvas-wrapped form and pulls the sheet back. Your breath leaves you all at once.
The man lying on the table is young. Younger than you expected. His face is slack in death but still held a faint echo of softness, the way a candle still smells faintly of smoke after being snuffed out. There are bruises around his throat, rope-shaped shadows left by some violent end.
You swallow. Victor watches you carefully. "You can leave,” he says again, too gently, knowing you won’t.
You step closer despite the tremor in your hands. “No,” you say quietly. “If you’re doing this, I need to understand it. All of it.” Victor nods once, the muscle in his jaw flexing. The hours that follow are a study in contrasts, your brother’s ruthlessness paired with your tenderness, his precision alongside your unease. You stand beside him as he unwraps body after body, as he examines limbs, checks joints, tests musculature, and assesses the strength of each spine. Harlander takes pictures with detached interest, occasionally offering to lift or rotate heavier corpses when Victor needs better angles.
A while later, Harlander and Victor prepare to leave for the nearby battlefield to “acquire” more specimens. Harlander convinces graveyard workers, morgue guards, and surgeons with alarming ease, all under the guise of wartime research. William stays behind to organize equipment before he returns home to Elizabeth.
When Victor pulls on his coat, he looks at you with a mixture of apology and nervous excitement.
"You’ll be safe here," he says, though he glances at the covered bodies as if unsure whether the promise applies to his own conscience. "We won’t be gone more than a few hours. There’s no reason to be uneasy.”
You lift your chin. “I’m not afraid.”
He searches your face for doubt. "Truly?"
“Truly,” you reply. “Go. I’ll sketch what I can.”
Something inside him softens, and he reaches to brush his fingers down your forearm, a quiet gesture of trust.
When they leave, the silence they take with them feels heavier than their footsteps.
You stand alone in the vast chamber, surrounded by canvas forms arranged like sleeping soldiers beneath flickering lantern light. The smell is metallic, cold, strangely clean, the scent of preserved flesh rather than rot. Your pulse quickens. But you force yourself forward, sketchbook under your arm, brushes and charcoal tucked into your pocket. “There’s beauty here,” you murmur to nobody, or perhaps to yourself, to steady your nerves. “I just have to look hard enough.”
You kneel beside one of the bodies, lifting the fabric to reveal a forearm. The skin is pale, waxen, but still holds shape and form. The blue veins beneath look almost like branching rivers.
You sketch them. Slowly. Deliberately.
A stray tear warms the corner of your eye, from the quiet tragedy of it all.
“You were someone,” you whisper to the corpse. “And you deserved more than this.”
But despite everything, as you draw the shape of the hand, the curve of the knuckles, the elegant slope of the wrist, you see beauty. Not the grotesque beauty Victor sees, not the scientific potential that moves him like a second heartbeat, but the inherent beauty of form, of existence, of what remains even when life has fled. You trace the line of the clavicle. You draw the shadows beneath the ribs. You sketch the curve of the spine. And slowly, painfully, you begin to understand why Victor believes so fiercely in what he’s doing. Life deserves to continue. People deserve second chances.
When Victor and Harlander return, the sun has sunk low, turning the windows a bruised orange. Victor strides inside breathless and exhilarated, pulling off his gloves with quick, jerky movements.
"We have enough,” he announces, nearly glowing. "Enough to begin assembling the thoracic structure. Come. Come see."
You rise quickly, closing your sketchbook and brushing dust from your skirts as you move toward him. “Show me,” you say, trying to steady the flutter in your chest.
Victor leads you to the central platform, a long metal table surrounded by gears, clamps, wires, and glass cylinders. He pulls back a fresh sheet and reveals the beginnings of something that looks like it belongs both in a cathedral and a nightmare.
A spine assembled from pieces of three different men. Ribs stretched and fixed into place like the frame of a great instrument. Shoulders that seem too broad, too strong.
You inhale sharply.
“Victor…” Your voice trembles with awe and dread in equal measure. “He’s… beautiful.”
Victor freezes. Then turns to you, stunned.
"You mean that?"
You nod slowly, your gaze tracing the symmetry of the sternum, the way the ribs arc like the hull of a ship, the careful stitching that binds the segments together without visible brutality.
“Yes. He looks like… like something that once belonged to heaven.”
Harlander steps closer, examining the structure with a more clinical eye. "If your sister sees beauty in this monstrosity," he muses, "then you are truly blessed. Artists see what others cannot."
You say nothing, but your fingers curl around your sketchbook.
You want to draw him.Not the bodies, not the death, but this. The rebirth. You step forward, looking Victor in the eye. “Tell me where I can stand. I want to capture everything.”
Victor smiles, a real smile, brief but bright.
"Stand wherever you wish. I want him to exist in your sketches before he ever exists in the world."
You approach the table, open your book, sharpen your charcoal. As Victor moves around the body, threading stitches, fitting joints, connecting clamps, murmuring excitedly about conductivity and electrical thresholds, you draw.
You draw the curve of the face. You draw the line of the spine. You draw the growing shape of a new Adam rising from the bones of the forgotten. You draw until your hand aches.
And as lantern light flickers across the unfinished body, casting long shadows across his skin, you realize something unsettling, he is strikingly beautiful.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
You can hear the wind rattling the broken shutters, carrying the smell of rain and the sharp tang of sea spray. Inside, the stone floor vibrates faintly beneath your shoes as Victor moves between the table where the creature lies and the scattered tools, muttering calculations under his breath, while Harlander lounges in the shadows with an intensity that makes the hairs on the back of your neck prickle. You hesitate in the doorway, your sketchbook under your arm, unsure if you are meant to be part of the chaos tonight or merely an observer, and Harlander steps toward you before Victor notices, his boots quiet against the stone.
“You have been at his side long enough to see what others would run from,” Harlander says, voice low, almost a murmur that seems to coil around you.
“I must ask… do you truly know what you are supporting?” His gaze holds yours with an unnerving patience. “Do you understand, Miss, that your devotion has made you invisible in his eyes? That everything you do- every steadying hand, every gentle observation is taken for granted, while the world will call him the genius behind this… monstrosity?”
You falter, feeling a twist of hurt and confusion. “I… I do not understand what you mean,” you answer softly, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. “Victor notices me. He… he values my work.”
Harlander tilts his head.
“Does he? Or is he simply accustomed to your presence? Think carefully. All the credit will go to him. You, who see the beauty where others see only corpses, you who can steady his fevered mind, what will become of you?”
His words slide over you like ice, and your pulse quickens. “You deserve to be recognized, not overshadowed by his obsession. If anyone could guide him… it is you, and yet he would take it for granted, as he has done for months, years.”
You swallow hard, a faint tremor in your voice. “I… I only wish to help. That is all. If I falter… if I hesitate…” You trail off, unsure how to articulate the unease twisting in your chest.
Harlander leans closer, his whisper low. “Then you must decide whether you serve him… or serve yourself.” He straightens, a shadow of a smile playing across his lips. “Remember that your gift, your insight, is your own. No one can claim it from you, except perhaps him.”
The sound of Victor’s voice calling your name from the main chamber startles you. You glance toward the shadows, and Harlander steps back, leaving a quiet tension behind. “Go,” he says, as if offering you a final chance to rethink your loyalties. “He cannot succeed without you… but perhaps he will not deserve you.”
You breathe deeply and walk back, each step weighted, your mind tangled in Harlander’s words, and when Victor finally looks at you, his brow furrowed with a mixture of relief and intensity, your chest tightens.
“You’ve been quiet,” he says, voice low, eyes tracing your face like he’s searching for signs of hesitance. “Tell me… what troubles you?”
“I am not troubled,” you whisper, though your hand tightens around your sketchbook, “but the work, it is… vast. And I cannot help but wonder if I am seeing it clearly, or simply… fearing it.”
Victor steps closer, leaning over the body, and you sense the tremor in his hands even as he steadies the clamps. “You fear nothing,” he murmurs. “You have always been my constant. You understand me better than anyone… better than William, better than anyone who has ever known me. Do you not feel it, this… imperative? If we fail… if I fail… then all of this dies.”
“I feel it,” you reply softly, “but… I wonder if it must be so. This… power we are wielding, are we certain it is for life and not for pride?”
Victor’s gaze sharpens, and his voice takes a trembling edge, a mix of desperation and authority. “Do you doubt me? After everything? Do you doubt the hours I have spent, the planning, the obsession that has consumed me because it must be done?” His hand quickly grabs your, almost pleading. “You are the only one who can witness this… and understand it. If you falter, if you leave me alone in this storm of inevitability, nothing will matter. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” you whisper softly, meeting his gaze, “I hear you. I will stay. I will not falter. I trust you… even when I still do not understand.”
He exhales, a fragile, sharp release of breath, and returns immediately to his work, adjusting wires and placing the final metal rib segment with a precision that makes your stomach twist. You glance at the creature, now fully assembled in its horrific symmetry, and whisper softly as you kneel beside it, caressing its wrapped face.
“You are… something I cannot yet name. But I will see you. I will witness you.”
Pairing(s): The Creature/Adam Frankenstein x Fem!Frankenstein twin sister! painter reader.
Warning(s): MDNI!! Slowburn. Really HEAVYYYY yearning from both parties lol. Some descriptions of gore and abuse, disturbing imagery, later chapters will contain smut, a problematic and emotionally manipulative sibling relationship, Victor is weirdly attracted to his sister…
Word Count: 2.9k
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The dining room is a cathedral of candlelight and shadow, all polished surfaces and soft murmurs swallowed by the vastness of Harlander’s estate. You sit beside Victor, your place as natural as breath, your navy blue dress pooling at your feet in quiet ripples. It softens you against the severity of the room. Across from you are William and Elizabeth, the first time you’ve shared a table with your youngest brother in a long time. His eyes flick to you often, warm and aching with familiarity. Elizabeth watches all of you with curiosity.
Harlander presides at the head, a still figure of immaculate posture and calm precision. He eats slowly, thoughtfully, as though already studying each of you. For a time, the conversation is harmless.
Until it isn’t.
Harlander sets down his fork and studies Victor with the faintest smile.
“So then is it true,” William asks, “you were dismissed from your medical program?”
Victor freezes. A small crack appears behind his eyes. “Yes,” he answers, but with a coolness as if the notion didn’t bother him.
Your fork stills halfway to your mouth. You turn your head toward him.
“Victor,” you say softly. “Dismissed" isn't the word they used. You were expelled.”
His jaw tightens. “And I earned it,” he replies sharply.
“You didn’t.” You lean closer, unable to stop the instinct to defend him. “You were working on theories they weren’t ready to understand. You need to have more faith in your-”
And then Victor speaks the first words he has ever used to wound you.
“What I’m doing,” he says, “is not a matter of… simple artistry. It isn’t something anyone can accomplish with pretty pigments on a canvas.”
The room stops breathing.
Your breath catches somewhere between your ribs and your throat. You stare at him, stunned. Not because the insult is lethal, but because it came from him.
Your Victor. The boy who held your hand at mother’s grave. The boy who slept on your floor the night father sent you both to separate rooms. The boy who told you your paintings meant something. Now he compares your life, your craft, your world… to a triviality.
To pretty pigment.
Shock melts into a slow, simmering anger, but it’s quiet. Across the table, William exhales.
“You almost sound like Father,” he says.
Victor closes his eyes, as if struck. “I didn’t-”
“Yes,” William says, firmer now, “it’s the same tone. Victor’s always been the one to harvest attention. Even as children I mitigated his voice by staying silent. Perhaps far too many times wouldn’t you say brother.”
Victor frowns at that, “If life can be regenerated, why whisper it?”
Elizabeth scoffs softly and Victor turns to her.
“You’re amused?” Victor’s eyes flicker with growing fervor. “You mock what you don’t understand.”
Harlander rises then, smoothing tension like a cloth over a stain. “William, cigar and brandy in my study? Surely you’ve heard my niece go on about the matter before.”
William stands, casting one last worried glance your way, then follows Harlander toward the study.
Elizabeth adjusts her napkin, clearly exhausted by the conversation.
And you push back your chair so swiftly the sound slices through the room.
Victor reaches for your wrist. “y/n- wait-”
You don’t let him touch you. You look him straight in the eyes, cold and collected in a way that terrifies him far more than tears ever could. Then you leave. You don’t shout. You don’t argue.
You simply turn your back and walk away.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The estate’s doors thud closed behind you, sealing the warmth and noise inside.
The night is cold enough to sting your lungs. Fog pools around your ankles like restless spirits. Your strides are quick, angry, as your dress snaps at your heels with each furious step.
You have never walked away from Victor in your life. But tonight he pushed you from his side like a stranger. You follow the long gravel road down toward the lamplit street. Your breath shakes. Your gloves are damp from gripping your skirts too tightly. By the time you reach the townhouse you share with Victor, your hands have balled into fists so tightly your nails left crescents in your palms.
You don’t remove your cloak. You don’t wipe your eyes even though the cold has made them sting. You go straight to your easel. Your fingers shake as you grab your palette, your brushes, your pigments. Blue- deep, bruised, angry finds your hand first. You begin painting before you can think. Broad violent strokes. You paint until the lines blur. Until the frustration burns hot behind your eyes. Until the room is filled with the sound of your brush skidding across the canvas in frantic bursts. You paint because you don’t know what else to do with the anger blistering beneath your ribs. The colors run together not a masterpiece, not a vision, just your hurt smeared across linen because you have nowhere else to put it.
Then you hear the door open quietly behind you. Victor steps in, fog still clinging to his coat and hair and he sees you instantly, your tense shoulders, your trembling hands, the violent blues staining the canvas. His lips part and he looks stricken with guilt. But no apology comes.
You hear Victor cross the room quietly, you barely register the soft shift of the old floorboards beneath his boots; your brush continues dragging its furious streaks of purple across the enormous canvas, the smell of oil paint thick in the air, your whole body tense with the memory of his words at dinner.
You feel him behind you before he touches you, the heat of him, the familiar presence, and then his arms slip around your waist in a slow, careful circle as though he’s approaching a frightened animal, not his own sister. His cheek lowering to your shoulder with a sigh that is too steady for an apology and your brush stills in the middle of a heavy stroke because you refuse to smear the painting further with your trembling.
You don’t turn around. You just stare at the half-finished chaos before you, a muddled storm of color and emotion that looks nothing like your usual work and you know he sees it. Knows exactly what caused it, but you also know that he won’t say the one thing you actually want to hear.
“Tomorrow morning,” he says finally, speaking softly against your shoulder, his breath warming your skin in a way that would normally comfort you but now only deepens the ache in your chest, “Harlander, William, and I will be leaving at first light. There’s an abandoned water-power station north of the valley. Old, decayed, a perfect shell for the machinery we’ll need. Harlander believes the foundations are still strong enough to support the apparatus, and William… well, William simply wants to see it.”
His arms tighten a little around you as if to pull you into the excitement he feels, the feverish purpose that has consumed him for months, yet still he does not apologize, does not acknowledge the way you left the estate without him. You breathe in slowly trying to ground yourself before you say something you’ll regret.
“And,” Victor adds as though he is offering you some small token, some peace offering that he hopes will bridge whatever distance lies between you now, “if it makes you feel better, while we’re gone, you can go into town. Do whatever you’d like. Buy new pigments, those ultramarines you love so much, visit the market… anything you want. You deserve a day without all of this weighing on you.”
He says it gently, as though this small gesture might undo the sting of what he said earlier, and you feel your jaw tighten because the offer, though sweet, feels strangely like a consolation prize, a distraction in place of the apology that still has not come. Your fingers clench around the brush. Paint drips from its tip to the floor with a soft pat. You can feel that he wants you to lean back into him. You can feel that he believes this should be enough.
But the sting of his earlier words is still raw, the memory sharp: It isn’t something anyone can accomplish with pretty pigments. As though your art were something trivial. As though your life’s work were merely decoration. Your silence lasts long enough that he shifts, just slightly, his chin lifting from your shoulder as though he’s trying to see your expression without forcing you to face him. He sighs through his nose, the weight of it brushing your skin.
“I know you’re upset,” he murmurs, and the calmness in his tone almost breaks something inside you because he sounds like he’s speaking to one of his experiments. “But everything that happened at dinner… all of it… it doesn’t matter compared to what comes next. What I’m on the verge of accomplishing will change everything. You see that, don’t you?”
You swallow, your throat thick, but you still say nothing.
Victor nudges closer, his arms tightening again, his chest pressing fully against your back now, his heartbeat steady even though yours feels like it is ricocheting painfully beneath your ribs.
“Tomorrow will be the first true step,” he says with quiet conviction, “the first time I’ll see the space where a new kind of life might begin. William’s coming because he believes in me, Harlander because he’s seen what the others refused to, and you…” he pauses, his voice dipping softer, “tu as toujours été celui qui me comprenait le mieux." (you’ve always been the one who understood me most)
He touches your hand very carefully, guiding your fingers to unclench from the brush, his other hand holding your waist as though he wants to anchor you in place. He sets the brush down beside the palette but doesn’t let go of you, doesn’t step away instead he rests his forehead lightly against the back of your head, exhaling a slow, measured breath that sounds like he’s bracing himself.
“When I come home tomorrow evening,” he promises quietly, “the moment I walk back through that door… if you’re still angry” his voice softens even further “Je t'écouterai. Vraiment. Mais ce soir… s'il te plaît, ne te surmène pas. Repose-toi. Peins si tu en as envie. Mais ne m'ignore pas complètement y/n." (I’ll listen. Truly listen. But tonight… please don’t push yourself. Rest. Paint if you must. Just don’t shut me out entirely y/n)
You inhale, the bitterness and love twisting together in your chest so tightly you can hardly speak, but still he doesn’t release you, as though holding you could somehow undo the damage. Victor’s embrace around you is warm and familiar and infuriatingly soothing, even though the words you need, the simple I’m sorry, still hang somewhere unspoken between you. And for now, you let him hold you, even though your heart beats unevenly beneath the weight of everything he doesn’t say.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The morning comes quietly, the light stretching across the floorboards in pale gold ribbons, and when you wake Victor is already gone. The house is silent, empty in a way that amplifies every thought, every emotion left from the night before, but it also gives you something you didn’t realize you needed, a day entirely your own. You rise slowly, feeling the soreness in your shoulders from painting so late into the night, and as you walk through the house the stillness feels less suffocating than it did yesterday. The anger hasn’t vanished, but it has lost its sharp edge.
You decide you won’t waste the day stewing in frustration. Victor offered you the freedom to go into town, and although the gesture wasn’t the apology you wanted, you decide you’re going to take advantage of it anyway. You dress deliberately, choosing something light and comfortable, an airy cream dress with a soft, wide skirt that moves like a sigh when you walk. You pin your hair back loosely, allowing some strands to fall around your face, and you take your time almost as if preparing for a day with purpose rather than bitterness.
Outside, the town smells of fresh bread and river mist. The sun sits high enough to warm your skin without turning the air thick, and as you walk into town you feel some of the tension in your shoulders ease. The market is already bustling, mothers haggling over fruit, children darting between stalls, merchants calling out prices. The noise is comforting, grounding. You drift first to the fabric merchant, letting your fingers skim over bolts of linen and velvet, touching everything simply because you can. You buy nothing, but the simple act of wandering makes your chest feel lighter. Then you make your way toward your favorite art shop, the little one tucked between the clockmaker and the old bakery.
Inside, the familiar scent of oils and chalk washes over you, and something inside you settles.
You buy new ultramarine pigment. You buy fresh brushes, thinner ones, capable of capturing fine lines. You even buy a small sketchbook with a thick leather cover, the kind you’ve always admired but never let yourself indulge in. Today, indulgence feels warranted. You tuck everything into your satchel and head toward the riverside path, your steps slower now, the weight on your heart easing with each moment of quiet independence.
By midday you’ve walked half the length of town, stopped twice for pastries you didn’t need, exchanged polite greetings with people you scarcely know, and found yourself sketching the riverside despite not intending to. You sit under a willow tree with the breeze kissing your face, drawing the bend of the water and the curve of the rocks and the way the sunlight breaks into little diamonds on the current. It feels good, simple, peaceful. No arguments. No sharp words. No pressure. Just you, your pencil, and the soft hush of the river.
By the time you head home, the sun hangs low, turning the sky a molten blend of orange and rose. Your arms feel warm, your heart much less tangled. You walk with a slower, steadier stride. And when you reach the front door, Victor is already inside.
He’s sitting at the table, elbows braced on his knees, fingers interlaced, his expression pulled tight, not frustrated, simply… tense, as though unsure how to begin. When you step inside, he stands immediately, his eyes flicking to your face and then to the sketchbook peeking from your satchel.
“You were out all day,” he says softly.
You nod. “You told me I could.” There’s no accusation in your tone, but he flinches anyway.
“Yes. I’m glad you went.”
Silence slips between you for a moment. Then Victor takes a slow breath, steps closer, and for the first time since last night, he looks truly vulnerable.
“I thought about what I said,” he murmurs, his hands flexing at his sides. “At dinner. And afterward. And this morning before I left.” His gaze lifts to yours. “I didn’t mean to belittle your work. I was defensive and… I shouldn’t have spoken that way.”
You swallow, feeling the faintest ache of vindication mixed with relief. You don’t force him to continue; he does it on his own.
“Tu es l'artiste le plus talentueux que je connaisse," (You’re the most talented artist I know) he says, voice quiet but steady, “et je me fie à votre œil plus que vous ne le pensez. Ce que j'ai dit n'était ni juste, ni vrai." (and I rely on your eye more than you realize. What I said wasn’t fair. Or true)
The apology is imperfect, rough at the edges, but it is real and that matters. You let your breath out slowly, your shoulders easing. Victor steps closer again, reaching for your hand with a tentative touch, as if giving you room to deny him. You don’t. When your fingers slip into his, some of the lingering bitterness loosens.
“There’s something else I need to tell you,” he says.
You raise a brow. “More bad news?”
He huffs a weak laugh, one that dies quickly. “More… change.”
He leads you toward the table, his thumb brushing over your knuckles as though rehearsing the reassurance he’s about to offer. When you both sit, he turns to face you fully.
“The building we saw today- it isn’t just a workspace. It will have to become… our home. At least for a while.”
Your breath catches. “Victor.”
He lifts both hands in a calming gesture. “It’s structurally sound, reinforced, secluded. Harlander believes it’s the only location that can support the machinery and keep the experiment hidden from the public. There’s room for living quarters, bare, but livable. And I would never ask you to move there if I believed it was unsafe.”
You look at him hard. “Will it be safe?”
“Yes.” he says immediately, with that single-minded fervor that borders on frightening. “I won’t let anything harm you. And you’ll be able to see everything. You’ll be there for each step. If you want-” his eyes brighten a little “you can paint the entire process.”
That stirs something warm inside you, curiosity, excitement. The idea of capturing each stage, every shift in Victor’s creation, each moment of triumph or failure, it ignites a fire in your chest you didn’t expect.
Your voice softens. “Tu me laisserais faire?" (You’d let me?)
“Je voudrais que vous," (I’d want you to) he says sincerely. “You’ll see things no one else will ever witness. You’ll be part of something that changes the world.”
His hand finds yours again, and this time you squeeze back. You’re not fully soothed. Not entirely convinced. But the day has cleared your mind, and his honesty, however messy, has smoothed the last of your anger. You inhale deeply, let the possibilities swirl around in your imagination, and for the first time you feel a flicker of anticipation rather than dread.
“Alright,” you say quietly. “Tell me everything.”
That makes Victor smile, not the manic smile he sometimes wears when his mind races too fast, but a small grateful one.
And as he explains the beginning of the greatest gamble of his life, you sit with him, sketchbook unopened at your side, your heart steadier, your anger spent, and your curiosity awake again.
Pairing(s): The Creature/Adam Frankenstein x Fem!Frankenstein twin sister! painter reader.
Warning(s): MDNI!! Slowburn. Really HEAVYYYY yearning from both parties lol. Some descriptions of gore and abuse, disturbing imagery, later chapters will contain smut, a problematic and emotionally manipulative sibling relationship, Victor is weirdly attracted to his sister…
Word count: 2.8k
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
You had lived with Victor for nearly six months and in that time, you had come to know the rhythm of the house.
The creak of Victor’s door at 4 a.m. The clatter of glass vials in the kitchen. The rustle of countless notes being rewritten over and over again. The quiet way he checked on you when he thought you were asleep. While you painted endlessly. Scenes of London fog, Victor’s profile in candlelight, the soft blue-gray of winter skies. Victor worked endlessly drawing anatomy diagrams, impossible theories, sleepless nights muttering some things about “vital forces” and “latent spark.”
And then came the invitation.
A letter arrived in the morning post bearing the university’s dark red seal. Victor stared at it for a long moment before breaking the wax. He read it silently. Then read it again. Then he sat back, breath shallow, eyes wide.
“What is it?” you asked.
He held out the letter, hand trembling.
“It’s… an invitation,” he whispered. “To present my findings. My theory. My… work.”
Your stomach tightened. “Before whom?”
He swallowed. “Before the Royal College of Medicine. Professors. Students. Investors.”
You leaned forward. “Do you believe yourself to be ready Victor?”
“No,” Victor said immediately then, almost at the same time. “Yes.” He pressed both hands over his face. “I don’t know. God help me, I don’t know.”
You took his hands gently from his face. “Victor,” you said softly, “you’ve worked years for a moment like this. And I will be there. The entire time.”
He inhaled shakily. Then nodded, almost boyishly.
“Reste près de moi." (Stay near me.)
“Toujours." (Always.) you whispered.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The lecture hall at the Royal College of Medicine was already near full by the time you and Victor arrived. Gas pipes hissed along the walls, bathing the marble columns and stained seating in a pale, almost aquatic glow that made everything look slightly unreal. Almost as if the entire room had been constructed in a fever dream. Students, physicians, and well-funded patrons murmured among themselves, their voices a shifting, unsettled tide.
Victor walked ahead of you, shoulders stiff beneath his dark coat, the weight of his presentation pressing against him like a second spine. You could feel the tension rolling off him even without looking. He had not slept much, hadn’t eaten properly, and the bags beneath his eyes only accentuated the hungry brilliance burning behind them.
You followed him down the aisle, dress wisping against the stone, the familiar blue shades you always wore catching the sunlight. You saw a few heads turn in your direction but not toward Victor, toward you. Paris had made you noticeable in ways you had not anticipated, and even now it startled you.
Victor turned slightly, just enough to see you over his shoulder. “Restez à proximité," (Stay near) he murmured. “La salle est bondée aujourd'hui." (The hall is crowded today.)
Crowded was an understatement. The air buzzed with an almost predatory curiosity. Whatever Victor intended to unveil tonight these people could smell it. You found two seats halfway down. Victor squeezed your hand once, a silent thank you, then descended toward the stage. You exhaled slowly, smoothing the creases of your dress’s fabric as you sat. But the moment you settled, someone else slipped into the seat beside you.
A tall man in an immaculate dark coat. Broad-shouldered. Clean-shaven. His hair combed neatly, glinting faintly gold under some of the gaslights. He placed his gloves on his lap, posture straight, movements controlled, a man accustomed to having his presence respected without commanding it overtly. He turned his head toward you, only slightly, enough to acknowledge that he was aware of your existence.
“Pardon,” he said softly, voice smooth, deeply measured. “Is this seat taken?”
“It isn’t,” you replied, offering a polite nod.
His gaze moved briefly over your attire: the blue, the subtle embroidery, the ink stains still faintly marking your fingers from your work earlier that morning.
“You wear color with a steadiness uncommon here,” he murmured. “It suits you.”
The compliment was so quiet it almost slipped between the breaths of the room, easy to miss if you weren’t listening for it. You blinked, caught off-guard, but before you could answer the hall fell abruptly silent. Victor was stepping onto the stage. The stranger beside you leaned back, attention forward now as if the brief exchange never happened. Victor’s lecture opened traditionally enough, the boundaries of life and death as the scientific world understood them and the limitations of medicine. His voice carried well in the auditorium, controlled but fervent, each word sharpened with purpose. Then came the turn. The cloth-covered table. The metallic apparatus. The sudden, electric anticipation.
Gasps scattered through the crowd as Victor pulled the sheet away, revealing the pale, assembled body beneath, an amalgamation of pieces stitched with careful, horrifying precision. You saw the way the hall recoiled. You saw the way Victor didn’t. You pressed your gloved fingertips together physically tensing. The stranger at your side did not shift, only watched.
Then he activated the machine.
The sound was metallic thunder. The body sprung to life, limbs jerking violently. Screams erupted from the spectator gallery; But you didn’t move, you couldn’t. Your breath locked in your throat as you watched the body’s chest rise, then shudder, then-
A finger twitched. The chest rose and fell. Eyes snapped open. Victor stepped back, triumphant and terrified all at once. The hall dissolved into chaos. People pushed past you, rushing for the exits. Papers flew. Someone cursed loudly about “madness” while another shouted for the constables. The stranger beside you finally stood, not hurriedly, but with a quietly amused composure as if he had expected the uproar. His gaze flicked to you.
“Stay close to your brother,” he advised gently. “There will be questions.”
Before you could speak, he disappeared into the crowd.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
As you and Victor were making your way back to your shared home, you caught a man sitting near the entrance. It was the same man who had sat beside you in the hall.
Only now he removed his gloves, offering Victor a courteous nod before introducing himself.
“Henrich Harlander,” he said. “Your demonstration was… enlightening.”
Victor froze. You blinked. So that was his name.
Harlander’s gaze shifted toward you only briefly. “I believe we’ve already shared a row this evening.”
Victor looked between the two of you sharply. “You’ve met?”
“Only in passing,” Harlander replied. “Your sister possesses a singular poise. Hard to overlook.”
You felt heat rise in your cheeks not from flattery but from the way Victor’s spine tensed at the remark. Victor stared, breath caught mid-exhale. You stared at Harlander, fully seeing him now, the precision of his speech, the wealth stitched into every hem of his coat.
“Before we discuss anything else,” Harlander added, “we have a personal matter to address.”
He glanced at you again. His tone softened as he pulled out a sealed letter.
“Here I have a letter of introduction from your brother William.”
“William?” you breathed.
Harlander cleared his throat politely. “If it suits you both, perhaps we might continue this discussion somewhere less… publicly volatile?”
Victor hesitated. You didn’t.
“Our home is just down this alley,” you said. “You may speak there.”
Harlander inclined his head. “Then allow me to escort you.”
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Victor unlocked the front door, pushing it open with a familiar creak. You’d grown used to the scent of the townhouse, chemicals, damp stone and the faint lingering sweetness of tea you often brewed in the afternoons. Tonight, though, something about it felt more exposed. More uncertain.
Harlander stepped inside with a quiet breath.
“You live… simply,” he remarked.
Victor huffed. “We live efficiently.” then gestured stiffly. “Sit wherever you like.”
Harlander selected the least unstable chair, lowering himself into it with deliberate ease. Victor took the seat beside him.
After a moment, you said, “I’ll make tea,” and slipped into the kitchen.
The kettle hissed softly, a gentle counterpoint to the muffled voices drifting from the next room.
“You… truly mean to fund this?” Victor questioned.
“If you are willing to collaborate. And if you have the discipline to control what you’ve awakened.”
“Control is not the issue. Understanding is.”
“Then we aim for both.”
Their voices sharpened, softened, overlapped. You brought in a tray of three cups, steam curling. Victor thanked you under his breath; Harlander thanked you with a slight bow of his head.
He watched the way you poured calm, practiced, elegant without meaning to be.
“You remind me,” Harlander said quietly, “of Elizabeth.”
You inhaled sharply, hands tightening around the teapot. Harlander continued, tone even.
“He speaks of you both often. More of you,” he added, glancing at you. “He said you painted every room of your childhood home with color while your father tried to drain the world of it.”
A soft laugh escaped you. “That sounds like him.”
Victor looked away, jaw tightening.
Harlander lifted his teacup. “He said the three of you were inseparable once.”
“We were,” you whispered.
Victor’s voice was quiet. “We will be again.”
Harlander nodded. “He’ll be here soon. Three days. He wished for you both to know.”
Your eyes burned; you blinked quickly, unwilling to cry in front of a stranger. Victor noticed this and quickly sat beside you, his hand brushing yours uncharacteristically gentle.
Harlander took a slow sip of tea, then set the cup precisely on its saucer.
“You should prepare yourselves,” he said. “He has grown into a man you may not recognize… and yet he is still unmistakably William.”
You nodded. “I don’t care how he’s changed. He’s our brother.”
Harlander leaned back, studying Victor with that sharp business-gaze.
“You know,” he said, “when your creation opened its eyes tonight… you looked like a man playing God.”
Victor stiffened. “I wasn’t-”
“But God,” Harlander continued smoothly, “has the luxury of perfection. You do not. You have ambition. Which means you need guidance.”
“I don’t need a keeper.”
“No,” Harlander agreed. “You need a partner.”
Silence coiled through the room.
You watched Victor carefully. This was the moment you knew would change everything. Harlander’s influence. Victor’s spiraling. The path to ruin disguised as opportunity.
Victor swallowed hard.
“And William?” he asked, voice low. “He… he’s truly well?”
Harlander nodded. “Thriving, practically making a name for himself.”
You closed your eyes. Relief swept through you so forcefully you almost slumped.
Harlander stood, gloves in hand. “I’ll leave you for tonight. We’ll speak again tomorrow.”
Victor rose as well, reluctantly polite. You moved to open the door for Harlander, grateful for an excuse to steady yourself. As he stepped out into the chill fog, Harlander paused. His gaze lingered on you in the lamplight only a moment, but enough to give the impression he was pondering something carefully.
“You seem to have your mother’s manner,” he said softly. “People listen when you speak, even when you whisper.” He bowed his head. “Goodnight.” Then he disappeared into the dark.
You shut the door and the moment it clicks Victor drags a hand down his face and mutters, “Que Dieu me protège de cet homme." (God save me from that man.)
You laugh tired but warm. “Il t'aime bien." (He likes you.)
“I don’t want him to like me. I want him to leave me the hell alone.”
You shake your head. “Victor, he knows William and he’s practically going to be family soon.”
That stops him again. He pulls you into a sudden, almost crushing embrace.
“We’re seeing him,” Victor whispers. “Three days.”
“Three days,” you echo.
Victor releases you, stepping back as if embarrassed by his own sentiment.
“Get some sleep,” he mutters. “We’re going to have a busy couple of days.”
You nod, but linger in the hall as he heads to his room, his silhouette swallowed by shadows.
As you extinguish the lamps one by one, the townhouse returns to its usual quiet.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The carriage rumbled up the long gravel path toward Harlander’s estate, wheels crunching over the frost-dusted ground. The building rose from the mist like some great ancestral beast, stone walls draped in ivy, a place built by someone who collected lives as easily as artifacts.
Victor adjusted his cravat for the third time, nerves betraying the composure he tried to maintain.
“Tu réfléchis trop," (You’re overthinking) you murmured.
“Je pense que c'est exactement ce qu'il faut," (I’m thinking exactly enough) he countered. “Harlander est… particulier." (Harlander is… particular)
“Et toi aussi." (So are you)
Victor shot you an offended glance before stepping out as the carriage halted. You followed, your new indigo blue gown catching the faint winter sunlight, a deeper shade than usual, rich and striking. Victor gave you a once-over he tried to disguise as a simple check.
“You look…” He cleared his throat. “You look fine.”
“Fine?” you teased.
He huffed and moved ahead. “Let’s not keep him waiting.”
But Harlander didn’t seem to mind being kept waiting. He was in one of many rooms of his grand estate, standing behind a large tripod-mounted camera with a black curtain draped over his arm. Before him, a woman posed in a thin mesh fabric holding up a piece of fruit against an elaborate set-piece backdrop.
Harlander raised a hand without looking away from the lens.
“You ate the peach?” he questioned the woman. His voice annoyed but composed.
She blinked rapidly, too nervous to respond. “I was hungry…”
Victor paused mid-step. “Is he photographing someone?”
“Yes,” Harlander replied, finally glancing over the camera. “Science and art are brothers, Mr. Frankenstein. One cannot progress without the other.”
He then looked over at the woman gesturing her to leave, “That will do. Leave the fabric somewhere on a chair before you go.”
The woman nodded and hurried away. Only then did Harlander turn fully toward the two of you.
“Victor,” he greeted, extending a hand. “Miss Frankenstein.”
“Good afternoon, Harlander,” you said with a polite dip of your head.
His gaze slid, unmistakably appreciative over your dress, the deep blue shade, the fitted bodice, the soft fall of the skirt.
“That color suits you better than the last,” he said. “It makes the eyes travel.”
Victor shot him a warning look. You, choosing grace, answered, “I’m glad you think so. And this machine… it’s remarkable.”
Harlander’s expression softened with interest. “You like the camera?”
“I’ve never seen one in person.”
“Then I will take your portrait,” he said simply. “Another day, when the light is kinder and you have the patience for stillness.”
Victor muttered, “She has no patience for stillness.”
You elbowed him, and Harlander’s mouth curved in the faintest ghost of a smile. Then he stepped toward Victor’s portfolio case.
“May I?” Harlander asked.
Victor handed the leather case over reluctantly. Harlander opened it, examining sketches of musculature, nerve pathways, machinery designs. His face revealed nothing, no shock, no moral hesitation, only interest. You took the opportunity to wander and Harlander’s estate was a museum of oddities: ancient fossils displayed like jewelry, mechanical devices half-assembled, pinned insects in glass cases, a full human skeleton reclining in a chair like a polite guest, books stacked in uneven towers and strange sketches pinned to walls, half anatomical, half biblical. Nothing in the manor chose one era, everything existed in a state of curated contradiction. You drifted toward a tall glass cabinet filled with preserved flowers, each suspended in clear resin.
That was when you felt a gentle tap on your shoulder. You turned- And your breath stopped.
“William?”
He grinned the same boyish grin, though framed now by a young man’s face. His hair longer, his jaw sharper, but his eyes unchanged. Those warm, earnest eyes that had never once looked at you with anything but love.
“Hello, sister,” he said quietly.
Your arms were around him instantly. William laughed breathlessly as you hugged him tight, clutching him like he might vanish if you loosened your grip. He wrapped his arms around you with equal force, holding on for a long moment before pulling back to look at you properly.
“You-” he began, shaking his head with awe. “You look exactly the same. And… not at all the same.”
Tears sprang uninvited to your eyes. “You’re taller.”
“That’s what happens when you feed a child,” he joked lightly.
You laughed, wiping your eyes quickly.
“Come,” he said, beaming. “There’s someone you must meet.”
He guided you toward a woman standing by a table admiring a skull. A gentle-featured young lady with warm brown eyes and a composed posture. Her gown was a soft cerulean, almost the twin shade of yours, though hers was simpler, more delicate.
“Elizabeth,” William said, touching her hand. “This is my elder sister.”
Elizabeth gave a kind smile and a nod. “It’s an honor,” she said warmly. “William has told me so much about you.”
“And I about you,” you replied.
Her eyes flicked admiringly to your dress. “That color is beautiful. I adore that shade.”
You smiled. “We seem to have chosen the same palette.”
“Yes,” she laughed softly. “It must run in the family.”
William leaned in close, whispering quickly, “I told her you’d like each other.”
You squeezed his hand. “You were right.”
Then the sharp sound of a door closing echoed through the hall. Victor walked in. He hadn’t seen William since childhood.
William took a step forward. “Victor!”
“William, look at you~” Then they embraced fiercely. Elizabeth watched quietly, your own heart swelling.
“May I introduce the woman I am to marry.” William said, gesturing to Elizabeth.
“Absolutely delighted.”
And with that you were all escorted to the dining room.
Pairing(s): The Creature/Adam Frankenstein x Fem!Frankenstein twin sister! painter reader.
Warning(s): MDNI!! Slowburn. Really HEAVYYYY yearning from both parties lol. Some descriptions of gore and abuse, disturbing imagery, later chapters will contain smut, a problematic and emotionally manipulative sibling relationship, Victor is weirdly attracted to his sister…
Word Count: 2.4k
Author’s Note: I didn’t realize how much love this was gonna get…🥹 I’m planning to post every like other day so I can at least write, post and get a break in between! Also let’s all collectively agree that if Victor did in fact have a sister he’d act this way lol. Enjoy!
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
The estate grew quieter after William left, in a way that felt unnatural, as though sound itself had chosen to abandon the place. His laughter, once a fluttering thing in the garden corridors, vanished entirely.
Yet even with his absence, you thought you had time. Time to grieve. Time to steady yourself. Time to cling to Victor while the world around you cracked. But time is never as generous as childhood imagines it to be.
Three days.
That was all you were given. Three days after William was torn from your arms, they came for you too. The relatives who swept in after your father’s death operated with the efficiency of undertakers. Their voices were thin and brittle, their expressions pinched in with perpetual worry or disdain, it depended on which great-aunt was speaking.
“It is for the best,” they insisted, like a mantra.
“The twins rely too heavily upon one another,” another said, eyes narrowed.
“Victor needs discipline,” murmured one uncle, as though he had ever spent a day disciplining anyone in his life.
“And she,” hissed a cousin with too-sharp cheekbones, “needs refinement, culture and a proper education for a girl of her… delicate nature.”
In truth, none of them knew you. None had ever cared to. But they were the ones with control now and they wielded it mercilessly. Victor fought. Of course he did. He argued until his voice broke. He stood between you and their accusations like a feral creature guarding its last possession. But the world was not kind to boys like him and even crueler to girls like you.
By the fourth morning, a carriage with polished brass fittings and luggage straps waited in the courtyard. A man you had never met held a folded letter declaring your placement at the Académie de Montmartre in Paris one of the most prestigious art schools in Europe. You stood on the front steps, throat tight, your single trunk at your feet. Everything you owned fit inside it, though you felt as if the most important piece of you remained elsewhere, behind you in the shadow of the estate. Victor appeared in the doorway, chest heaving from the sprint he must have taken to reach you.
“You’re not leaving,” he said, the words desperate. “I won’t allow it.”
A small laugh slipped from you despite yourself. “You can’t stop them, Victor.”
“I can try.”
His voice cracked, raw. “Laisse-moi essayer." (Let me try.)
He moved as if to seize your arm, to pull you inside and bar the doors, to barricade the estate with you safely behind him. But one of the relatives, an uncle you despised, grabbed Victor by the shoulders and pulled him back.
“Enough, boy.”
Victor snarled. Actually snarled. It took two grown men to restrain him. Your heart twisted. You ran to him, cupping his face, forcing his gaze back to you.
“j'écrirai," (I will write) you said, breath shaking. “Je te retrouverai." (I will find you again)
His eyes burned. Dark, furious, wet, a child’s grief trapped inside a young man’s face. He pressed his forehead to yours with something like desperation.
“We’re being torn apart,” he whispered. “Like animals.”
“Only for a while,” you said.
The door of the carriage opened behind you. The cold outside deepened.
“Please,” Victor rasped. “Don’t go.”
“I must.” You swallowed the ache clawing up your throat. “But you will never lose me.”
Those were the last words you shared before the door shut. Before the horses lurched forward. Before the estate shrank into a smear of gray and shadow behind the glass. Victor stood in the courtyard long enough to see you vanish from sight. You knew because you watched him until the carriage turned the corner, and even then you felt the weight of his gaze long after you were gone.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
London was a creature of smoke and restless ambition, Victor fit into it like a blade fits a wound. He wrote to you in those first weeks with a ferocity that nearly tore through the paper. He described everything: His cramped room with its low ceiling. The bell that rang at dawn to summon students to lectures. The dissection theater that was cold, reeking of chemicals and old flesh. The instructors who praised brilliance but sneered at hesitation. He was studying anatomy. Physiology. Natural philosophy. Anything that hinted at the mysteries of life and death. He was proud of the work, yet every line of his letters carried an undertone of loneliness a kind of hollow echo you knew too well.
"It is not the studies that trouble me, but the emptiness where your voice should be. V.F."
He never said he missed you outright. He did not need to. The silence between his sentences did it for him.
Paris, by contrast, was all light. Or so it seemed at first. Your school was nestled in the higher quarter of Montmartre, close to the windmills and the cafés that never fully slept. The ancient building smelled of linseed oil and candle smoke, its walls plastered with half-finished sketches and sculptures in every stage of birth. Your instructors adored you. Your classmates envied you. Paris welcomed you with open arms.
“I have never seen hands so steady,” your mentor, Madame Delacroix, told you. “Nor a mind so tender.”
But no matter how bright Paris glowed, London’s shadows lingered at your back. You painted daily. The rooftops, the river, the markets, the faces of strangers who became muses. But your truest paintings the ones you never showed, were of your dear brother Victor.
His hands working. His profile against an imagined lamplit desk. His eyes, always searching, always wanting. Some nights, when the dormitory fell silent, you felt as though your soul stretched across the Channel, reaching for the twin flame flickering in London.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Years slipped by, but the letters remained constant.
They arrived: Folded hastily sometimes stained with ink. Sometimes smudged by a thumb dragged across drying script. Sometimes flecked with something darker, the evidence of his work, perhaps, or of his sleeplessness.
You wrote in return: Pages filled with sketches of Paris streets. Descriptions of the colors of dawn. The warmth of your friendships. The exhibitions that slowly made your name known in artistic circles. Both of you were growing, changing, becoming. But one thing remained untouched: The quiet promise you made to each other.
And then, one winter, his letters stopped. The first week, you told yourself it was misplacement. The second week, you assured yourself he was busy. The third week, you reasoned that perhaps the mail was slow. By the sixth week, reason had abandoned you. You wrote again and again, each letter shorter than the last, more frantic, more honest.
Victor, answer me.
Victor, are you unwell?
Victor, what has happened?
Nothing.
Winter deepened and the cold crept beneath your skin. When your mentor noticed the dark circles beneath your eyes, you lied and said you were merely tired. When your classmates asked why your hands shook, you blamed the chill. But the truth was simple, you felt half alive. And that was something you refused to endure any longer.
So you left Paris before dawn.
The sky was a pale blue, the air sharp enough to cut. You carried with you only your essentials: clothing, art supplies, a handful of coins, and the final letter you had written to Victor. The one you had not mailed because you feared it would simply get lost in the void he had become.
The crossing to England was rough, the waves churning like something alive and irritated. Yet your resolve held firm, a silent, burning line straight to London. Once there, you traversed fog-soaked streets, past chimneys belching black smoke and crowds bustling in hurried urgency. You found his lodgings near the university a narrow building sagging between two taller ones, its windows fogged, its door scuffed from years of use.
You knocked.
Once. Twice. Your heartbeat throbbed in your throat.
The door creaked open.
Victor stood in the doorway like a ghost who wasn’t sure how he’d been summoned. His hair was a bit longer, disheveled, brushed away from his face with nervous hands. His eyes, always expressive, seemed different now: dimmer in some ways, sharper in others. His posture was stiff, as though he’d forgotten how to hold himself around familiar people. It was the look of a man who had spent too long in solitude.
“Victor,” you breathed.
He said your name like a prayer. Or a curse. Or both.
He stared, truly stared, at you. Drinking in every detail with the stunned horror of someone who had forgotten beauty existed.
“You…” His voice caught. “You’ve changed.”
You smiled softly. “We both have.”
He swallowed, throat bobbing. “You look-” He stopped, breath shaking. “Different.”
You stepped inside brushing past him, your heels echoing on the wooden floor.
“I’ve come to stay with you,” you said, setting your luggage down.
He blinked as though the words made no sense.
“To- to stay?”
“Yes.”
He seemed caught between outrage, disbelief, and something far softer and more dangerous.
“You can’t simply-”
“I can,” you said, lifting your chin. “And I will.”
He gaped at you, as though he had no idea how to process this version of you: confident, self-possessed, brilliant, wholly formed in a way that made your shared childhood seem like a past life.
“Why?” he whispered.
You moved closer, the lamplight brushing across your features. You lowered your voice.
“Parce que je n'ai pas pris la peine de trouver un mari," (Because I haven’t bothered finding a husband) you said looking away. “J'étais trop occupé à devenir un peintre renommé." (I was too busy becoming a well-renowned painter.)
His lips parted, breath uneven.
“Et parce que," (And because) you added, softer, “Je suis ta sœur, et tu as cessé de m'écrire." (I am your sister, and you stopped writing to me.)
A crack formed in his expression, something feverish on the edges.
“Eh bien… bienvenue chez vous," (Well then... welcome home) he whispered, almost inaudible.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Victor’s house was not truly a house at all, it was a dwelling in the older sense of the word. A place where someone lived only because they had no time or energy to live anywhere else. It clung to the narrow London street like a weary ghost as if trying to whisper some secret into the fog. Inside, the air smelled faintly of ink, old books, chemicals, and cold metal. A strange bouquet and unmistakably Victor.
The first thing you did after stepping through the door was inhale deeply, a smile forming as you dropped your traveling coat over the nearest piece of furniture.
“This place,” you murmured, turning in a slow circle. “It looks nothing like home.”
Victor winced slightly. “Well… home never had jars of preserved amphibians on the mantle.”
You laughed, and it's the first warm thing he's heard in this otherwise dim, dusty place.
“No,” you said. “It didn’t.”
He watched you with a near-feverish focus, as though trying to memorize the exact sound of your amusement after so many years of silence. His gaze traveled down your silhouette, pausing briefly at the shade of your dress. A deep, saturated sapphire blue that made your skin glow against the gloom.
You caught the look and raised a brow. “What is it?”
He shook his head once, though not convincingly. “You look… ah…”
He cleared his throat. “Different.”
“Again?” you teased. “You said that the moment I arrived.”
“Yes,” he admitted quietly. “It seems I must say it again.”
You brushed the remark aside, or pretended to and stepped toward the living room. That was when Victor noticed the satchel slung over your shoulder.
“…Is that full of art equipment?” he asked, bewildered.
“Full?” you scoffed. “There’s more outside. The coachman is bringing it in.”
Victor blinked, then moved toward the door with a speed that bordered on frantic.
“He shouldn’t lift all that alone—”
“He’s paid for it,” you replied as he tugged the door back open. “And besides, you needn’t fuss. I’m used to moving canvases and easels by now.”
Victor stared at you in a way that told you he didn’t like that answer. Not because it was false but because it made him realize how much of your life he had missed. When all your crates, boxes, and satchels were finally inside, the entryway looked as though a small art studio had exploded across it. Victor surveyed the chaos with a kind of dazed awe.
“My God,” he whispered. “You brought… everything.”
“Of course.” You shed your gloves and smiled lightly. “I’m not here for a short visit, Victor. I brought my life with me.”
Something flickered in him at that, breathless and almost boyish.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
Within minutes, you were everywhere at once.
You dragged a crate across the floor with the determination of a soldier repositioning artillery. You pushed furniture aside, clearing wall space for future canvases. You unbuckled leather straps, unwrapped brushes in rolls of canvas, and sorted your pigments, arranging them in a precise order that looked like chaos to anyone who wasn’t you.
Victor followed behind you helplessly, hands hovering and falling, uncertain where to help.
“You always used to do this,” he said at last, voice softening with memory. “Storm into a room and make it yours.”
You smiled without looking up from your work. “You make it sound like a crime.”
“Oh, it is,” he said gravely. “The crime of total conquest.”
You laughed again, and a wash of color bloomed through the dim room not from your paints, but from the warmth settling between you. When you finally took a breath and looked around, you were flushing slightly, pleased with yourself. The room had transformed in less than an hour. What had once been cluttered and dim now bore the unmistakable beginnings of an artist’s sanctuary.
“The light is good in here,” you said thoughtfully. “Harsh in the mornings, gentle in late afternoon. The dust motes are beautiful, too.”
Victor looked genuinely baffled. “Dust motes?”
You nodded, stepping into a beam of weak London light streaming through the narrow window. Its pale glow caught the faint particles drifting in the air.
“They dance,” you said softly. “Even in stillness.”
Victor stared at you and the light made the blue of your dress even richer, like deep ocean ink. You always wore blue, in some shade or another, a fact he remembered without realizing it. The color clung to you now like a second skin.
“I had forgotten…” he murmured.
You glanced at him. “Forgotten what?”
He swallowed. “…Tu es si belle en bleu." (…How beautiful you look in blue)
You stared at him for a moment, but then shot a cheeky grin. "Tu as toujours eu le don des mots Victor." (You've always had a way with words Victor.)
He seemed startled by his own honesty and looked away quickly, clearing his throat as though trying to cough the confession out of existence.
Pairing(s): The Creature/Adam Frankenstein x Fem!Frankenstein twin sister! painter reader.
Warning(s): MDNI!! Slowburn?, Really HEAVYYYY yearning lol. Some mild descriptions of gore and abuse, later chapters will contain smut, a problematic and emotionally manipulative sibling relationship, Victor is weirdly attracted to his sister…
Word Count: 2.3k
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
You and Victor were born minutes apart on a night when thunder crawled across the sky. Your mother used to say that you came into the world during the same breath of lightning, that the two of you carried a storm between you. She always said it with a soft laugh, brushing the hair from your faces with hands warm from the hearth.
Your father never laughed when she said it. He didn’t see storms as wonder. He saw them as danger, chaos, unpredictability; which was perhaps why he spent so little time trying to understand his children.
Victor sought Father’s praise like a starved thing. You avoided it like a flame and paid no mind to the backhanded comments he would give about painting being a useless skill.
It made you opposites from the very beginning.
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The Frankenstein estate was a place of echoing halls and candle-shadows, but to you, it always smelled faintly of salt when the wind was right. Every morning, your mother would open the windows and let the breeze tumble through the house. Every morning, Victor would wrinkle his nose. Every morning, you would breathe a little deeper.
Your mother noticed it before anyone else, the way your eyes lingered on color, on light, on the shape of certain objects you found interesting. She bought you your first paints when you were six, even though your father said it was frivolous.
“Il n'est pas frivole de donner une langue à un enfant," (It is not frivolous to give a child a language.) she told him firmly.
And painting became exactly that for you. A language that didn’t require permission. A world where your father’s indifference was irrelevant, and Victor’s intensity softened around the edges. So you painted everything. The mountains, the trees, your mother’s hands, Victor’s shoes when he sat too long beside you and got bored.
Victor would lie on the ground beside you, staring up at the ceiling, talking about the things he wanted to build one day. Machines. Theories. Impossible creations.
“How will you do that?” you’d ask, smearing blue across a canvas.
“By refusing to accept the world as it is,” he’d say.
You found that amusing about him, the way he believed the world should bow to understanding. He loved that about you, the way you accepted the world completely, even its ugliness, and still found beauty.
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Your mother had always been the warmest part of the house. Someone you could always confide in whenever you were troubled or just a pillar of stability that kept both you and victor grounded. So when you heard her scream echo through the estate your heart dropped, it felt as if the world fractured.
You remembered candlelight. Shadows. The smell of iron drifting through each room. Victor’s hand clutched in yours, his fingernails digging into your skin as if he could anchor himself to you alone.
Your father shouting instructions in the distance, someone rushed for hot water, people pacing under the frantic precision of a man trying to control something uncontrollable, and you stood at the bottom of the stairs, frozen, listening.
Then silence.
Silence shouldn’t be that loud. But it was. A moment later, a cry, a thin, wavering newborn wail that sliced through the house like a blade. Your father exhaled shakily.
The midwife whispered “A boy.”
Victor stared ahead, lips bloodless, eyes shining with a mixture of dread and something like betrayal. You didn’t move. You couldn’t.
It wasn’t until a servant touched your shoulder gently that you realized your fingers were trembling. Then your whole body.
“She’s gone.” you murmured.
Something inside your chest cracked. A painting doesn’t split with sound, it splits in silence. That was what happened to you.
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They had covered the mirrors. They draped black cloth across the windows. The house felt like it was holding its breath, as if grief itself was walking the halls and must not be disturbed. You couldn’t look at your brushes. The colors felt indecent. The idea of doing something your mother introduced to you without her support felt heavy.
Victor stayed close, though he pretended he wasn’t hovering. He’d appear in doorways, leave food by your side, sit at the foot of your bed with a book he didn’t read.
“Tu devrais peindre," (You should paint) he said once, quiet. Out of concern. Out of desperation. Out of a need for you to stay… you. But you shook your head.
“Pas maintenant. Pas sans elle." (Not now. Not without her.)
He didn’t push. Victor never pushed you the way your father pushed him. Instead, he sat beside you until the candles burned low, his expression distant, wounded, furious at a universe he could not dissect or fix. But more furious at your father for allowing your dear mother to perish.
William cried down the hall, tiny, helpless and motherless. You tried not to hate him for it. You tried not to think of the life that traded places with hers. But mostly, you felt nothing at all. Just numbness where color used to be.
And so some years passed.
William grew into a bright-eyed, curious little boy with a laugh that bounced down the halls like sunlight refusing to be swallowed by the gloom of the estate. You loved him. You really did. But painting? That part of you had died with your mother. Or so you hopelessly believed.
Until the day William wandered into the sitting room, tugging at your dress.
“Is this yours?” he asked, pointing at a small painting leaning against the wall, one you had done when you were nine, a childish but earnest seascape full of bright color.
“Yes,” you said softly. “A long time ago.”
William blinked at the canvas, wide-eyed.
“It’s beautiful.”
You froze. Beautiful.
He said it with the same certainty your mother used to. As if beauty wasn’t subjective, as if it simply was. He turned to you with a shy excitement, cheeks rosy.
“Why don’t I see you paint anymore? I wanna see more.”
Your throat tightened. No one had asked you that in years. Not kindly, anyway. Victor had asked out of worry. Your father never asked at all.
But William asked out of wonder. Out of genuine admiration.
“I…” You swallowed. “It’s been a long time.”
He tilted his head in that childlike, heart-wrenching way. “But you can still do it, right? Right? You’re the best in the whole house.”
The whole house. You almost laughed. This gloomy, dark, haunted place you’d lived your entire life suddenly felt too small for the earnestness in his voice. Something unknotted inside you. Not quite healed. Just loosened.
“I suppose,” you whispered, fingers brushing against some of his gold curls, “I could try again.”
William beamed, all teeth and joy and innocence.
You spot Victor watching from the doorway, eyes shadowed. He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. You could read the quiet resentment in the tight set of his jaw, the way his fingers flexed, the way he looked at William, not with hatred, but with a bitter, aching disbelief. Because Father praised William openly. Because Father held him, taught him, smiled at him in ways he never had with you or Victor.
Because William grew up loved and Victor grew up… hungry for it.
And now William had brought back something Victor thought only he could protect. He had brought color back into your life. It stung him.
It frightened him. It made him furious at himself for feeling that way. You turned, meeting his gaze fully. Victor looked away first. And for a moment, just a flicker, you wondered if your brother feared that William’s presence meant losing you, the one person he had relied on long before the world bruised him.
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The night Victor changed began on a night that should have been ordinary.
Rain tapped at your window, soft as fingertips. The walls moaned against the blowing winds. You slept curled beneath a quilt your mother had made when you were small, all faded blues and delicate stitching, a relic of a gentler world. Then your door creaked open.
“Wake up,” Victor whispered.
His voice wasn’t urgent. It sounded haunted by something.
You sat up slowly, rubbing your eyes. Victor stood next to your bed, candle in hand, shadows carving his cheekbones sharp and hollow. His hair stuck up in frantic, uneven strands, like he’d been running his hands through it.
“Victor…?” you mumbled. “What’s wrong? Did you have a nightmare?”
“I’m awake,” he said, quickly. “That’s the problem.”
The candle sputtered. Rain lashed the windows. Your brother set the candle down somewhere in your room and closed the door behind him. And you knew that something was deeply troubling him.
Victor sat on the edge of your bed without asking, hands shaking, breath ragged. His nightshirt was wrinkled; he smelled faintly of candle smoke and adrenaline.
“Listen to me,” he said, gripping your wrist like a lifeline. “Just… listen. I’ve figured it out.”
“Figured what out?” you whispered.
“How to stop death.”
Your breath froze.
“No more endings,” he said, voice trembling. “No more empty rooms. No more mothers buried before their time. No more pain we can’t fix.”
“Victor what-”
He cut you off with a wild shake of his head.
“I can do it. I can reverse it. I can reassemble what’s lost and make it breathe again.”
You stared at him, stunned, terrified by the desperation tangled inside his eyes.
“Victor,” you whispered, “you’re talking about-”
“Life.” He leaned closer, voice breaking. “I’m talking about life.”
Lightning flashed and you saw him the way he truly was: A boy who had never recovered from the night your mother died, who had spent every year since trying to understand the shape of grief by dissecting the world around him. A child who thought he had failed her. A twin who feared losing anyone else, especially you.
“Please,” he whispered, pressing his forehead to yours, “ne me dis pas que je suis folle. Si tu le dis, je le croirai." (don’t tell me I’m mad. If you say it, I’ll believe it.)
Your hands rose to cup his face, thumbs brushing the trembling edges of him.
“I think you’re hurting,” you said gently. “And I think you want to fix something that wasn’t your fault.”
His eyes filled, furious with emotion.
“Mais je pense aussi," (But I also think) you continued softly, “que si quelqu'un peut changer le monde… c'est vous." (that if anyone could change the world… it’s you.)
He inhaled sharply. A sound like breaking, like relief, like something dangerous being set loose.
“You believe in me,” he breathed.
“Of course I do,” you said, brushing his hair back. “I always have.”
He closed his eyes, leaning into your palm like a child seeking warmth. For one fragile second, he wasn’t a boy trying to conquer death. He was your brother. Your twin. Your heart’s other half. Then he pulled away, face hardening with purpose.
“ Then I suppose I have work to do,” he muttered. “Years of it.”
Victor did not sleep for nights after that. Not properly. Not peacefully. You would find him in the study at dawn, scribbling equations you couldn’t understand, muttering theories under his breath. He loved you. But he loved his obsession more. And your father noticed. For the first time in his life, he turned his complete attention toward Victor. Not with affection, but with anger, suspicion, disappointment. You? He still ignored. And you preferred it that way. But the household atmosphere changed. Tightened. Darkened.
Until one morning, the silence broke.
Your father collapsed at breakfast, clutching his chest, eyes glazed with shock. Victor moved first. Hands shaking, shouting for help, trying desperately to hold him upright, as if willpower alone could keep a man alive. You knelt beside him, tears streaming, clutching his sleeve, whispering, “Father, please,” even though you had no idea why you were pleading.
William watched as he cried in a corner, only nine years old, terrified. But no prayer, no scream, no desperate gasp could pull your father back. He died in Victor’s arms and Victor felt it like a personal failure.
“I could’ve saved him,” he sobbed later, pacing in circles. “If I’d started sooner… if I’d worked faster…”
You held him tightly. But nothing reached him...
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After the funeral, relatives descended like vultures. Whispering. Questioning. Blaming. And in the end, decisions were made without you or Victor. William was to be taken in by distant family friends in Vienna. A “kinder environment.” A “healthier influence.”
Victor overheard one aunt say, “He mustn’t be corrupted by them.”
Victor nearly lunged at her. You held him back with trembling arms. When the day finally came, the carriage stood ready in the courtyard. William stared up at you, eyes wet, lip trembling.
“Do I… have to go?” he whispered.
Your heart cracked in two. You knelt, pulling him close.
“No goodbye,” you murmured into his hair. “Never goodbye.”
He nodded fiercely, gripping your sleeve. Victor stepped forward then, stiff and pale, as if carved from sorrow. William hugged him tightly and to your shock, Victor hugged back, hard, almost desperately.
“I’ll come back,” William sniffled against his shirt. “I promise.”
“We’ll find you,” Victor whispered, voice breaking. “No matter what. We’re your family.”
You rested your hands on both their backs, anchoring them the way your mother once anchored you. The carriage driver cleared his throat. It was time. William looked at you one last time, eyes shining with the fragile faith only a child could possess.
“See you soon?” he asked.
“Yes,” you breathed. Not a lie but a promise. The door closed. The wheels groaned and William was carried away down the long road, disappearing between the trees. Victor’s shoulders shook beside you. The storm inside him had finally lost its last tether to gentleness. You took his hand and squeezed.
“We’ll see him again,” you whispered.
Victor didn’t speak. But he squeezed your hand back. Hard. As if he needed you to keep him from falling apart.
formatting inspired by @itsluckylolita :) check her fics out!
