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Who is the monster, and who is the man?
It’s a question he’s been asking himself more often as of late. A few short years ago, he never would have bothered to, his arrogance and pride would have confidently answered that he was the man and the monster was nothing more than a monster.
Now though… Victor isn’t sure he ever really knew the answer.
For all the education he received, for all the knowledge he acquired over his relatively short life, perhaps he never really knew anything at all. Perhaps everything he’d ever done was just blind stumblings, making one rash decision after another. Even Victor can admit that he has a tendency to leap before he looks.
Of course, this revelation only occurs when he’s in his final hours.
And it makes him wonder, all the things that could’ve been, how everything could have been if he’d done things differently.
If he hadn’t allowed his hubris to guide him, or at least, if he’d stayed instead of fleeing his creation. If Henry had never gotten involved just for knowing Victor. If he’d never decided to marry Elizabeth; he loved and cared for her, but not in the way she deserved, and she deserved more than a life with him would have given her.
Justine deserved more too, and Victor regrets not doing more, even if no one would’ve believed him, he still should’ve tried.
And, Victor finds himself wondering, what could’ve been of the creation that never was, the intended bride for the creature.
There had been, surprisingly, genuine worry that she would’ve hated and rejected his creature, causing more harm than good, and obviously there was fear; his creature had already killed at least once by the time they met after the night Victor had fled, who was to say that she wouldn’t follow in those footsteps?
But while there was worry and fear in equal parts, there had also been jealousy, now that he looks back on all of it.
Yes, jealousy.
Jealousy at the thought of—
Well… it doesn’t matter anymore, does it?
Victor is dying. The arctic chill seeped into his bones, into his very being, and there’s no escaping it. Leaping before he looked, and now he has to finally accept the consequences of his actions. Finally take responsibility for his choices and mistakes, for all of it.
Which is why he decides to go on, to chase after his creature even though he knows it can only end in one way.
He doesn’t know if he even makes it off the ship, the world turning hazy at the edges as he tells Captain Walton to seek “happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition.” Warning the Captain of the pitfalls of hubris might be the only thing he’s ever done right in his life.
Blissful dark envelops him.
***
In the dark, there’s someone crying.
It’s a terrible, awful mourning wail that he can’t help but reach out towards, to comfort, to soothe, even though he knows that there’s no one left who would mourn his passing. Trembling fingers press against something warm, but rough, and he marvels that he still has a sense of touch in death. There’s a brief pause in the sobbing, but when it starts up again, there’s relief replacing the heart wrenching sadness.
A pair of large hands grasp at him, hauling him close, fingers running through his hair; at least death is more comfortable than he thought.
***
Time passes oddly in death, alternating between bouts of absolute darkness and glimpses of strange dreams that pass by in a flash.
He sees the creature, sometimes reading by candlelight in a ship cabin, the soft flames casting his face in dancing shadows. Other times, the creature is speaking with Captain Walton in hushed tones. It’s a little baffling, these dreams; it makes some sense that the creature would be in them, most of Victor’s final thoughts being of the creature, but the Captain? Well, he supposes that since Captain Walton was the last person he saw before dying…
Then there are the other dreams, the ones that feel more like dreams within dreams where he’s sees all those who have long since passed. Victor holds them all close, apologizing for the things he’s done and the things he didn’t do, crying until some unseen force combs through his hair, hushing him until the dreams within dreams fall away once more to the dark.
***
The ever present chill fades after a while; how long, Victor honestly couldn’t say.
With the receding chill comes regret.
Regret that everything could’ve been so easily avoided if he hadn’t turned away from the creature’s outstretched hand that night. In another life, perhaps Victor did things the way he should’ve. Maybe if he’d accepted his creation from the start, then maybe his family and others could’ve accepted the creature too. Maybe then no one would’ve died.
But it’s far too late.
Victor can’t undo what has been done, and now he has to live with his regrets in death.
***
For the first time in what has probably been quite a while, the dark begins to dissipate.
Slowly, at first – flashes of a port at night, being carried by someone abnormally tall, Captain Walton watching the departure with a thoughtful expression – before it starts to pick up pace – traveling through forests by day and along actual roads at night, the lights of distant towns and villages shining bright like the North Star – until it finally sticks, and Victor wakes in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room.
Judging by the faint, pale light filtering in through the windows, it’s early morning.
Pushing himself upright, Victor takes in his surroundings; the room is decently sized, if somewhat bare. There’s an armoire against the far wall, the large bed he’s currently sitting on, a small bedside table with a thick book resting atop it, and a chair next to the table, angled towards the bed.
Without making a sound, Victor slips out from between the sheets and leaves the room on slightly unsteady legs. He walks silently through the small home that is undecorated, only filled with the bare essentials, until he finally finds the front door. Outside is just as unfamiliar as inside, a wooded area high up on a cliff with a path leading down to the shore.
Following the path, Victor doesn’t wonder where he is or how he got here; he’s fairly certain he knows how he got to this place, wherever it happens to be.
The sand is soft and cold beneath his bare feet and he doesn’t have to go far to find who he’s looking for.
Even sitting down and watching the sun rise, the creature is impossibly tall and hard to miss.
Victor stands there for a moment, just taking in the scene before him, the long black hair spilling over the plain cotton shirt like ink, the pale mottled skin lined with scars that have yet to fade where there used to be thick yet sturdy stitches holding the patchwork together. A being brought to life for no reason other than the fact that Victor wanted to prove that he could.
Leaping before looking.
(Who is the monster, and who is the man?)
(The monster had been himself, the hubris and the vehement rejection he used to harbor.)
The creature doesn’t look at him when Victor sits down beside him on the sand. They sit in silence, watching the horizon and the waves.
“For the longest time, I hated you,” the creature admits quietly. “But then you died and it was as if the whole world came crashing down around me.”
The creature lapses into silence, his jaw clenching like he’s got more to say and he just hasn’t figured out how to yet, so Victor says nothing.
“You died and took my heart with you,” he finally continues. “It was only when you were gone that I realized I never actually hated you, not even a little bit.”
“Not even at all?” Victor asks in a poor attempt of a joke at what is definitely an inappropriate time, but it gets an amused huff from the creature nonetheless.
“No, not even at all,” the creature answers, finally looking at Victor with those sad, pale eyes of his.
“I thought I hated you,” Victor admits, because there’s no point in lying – to himself or anyone else – anymore. He has to crane his head to look the creature in the eye. “But I think it was more the reality of what I had done had finally settled in. Because I did something that I realized I couldn’t just undo, all for the sake of proving that I could. I thought I hated you, but it was fear of what other people would think. Of what they would think of me and what I did to give you life. Of what they would think of you, and how they might mistreat you through lack of understanding.”
“They mistreated me anyway,” the creature points out, but there’s no anger in it.
Victor nods.
“Yes. They did and so did I. It’s part of why I never finished making the wife you wanted. I feared she’d reject you like I had.”
“And the other part?”
“Jealousy,” Victor answers, and the honesty of it seems to surprise the creature. “I wasn’t able to admit it to myself then. Nearly dying of hypothermia really puts things into perspective.”
“I suppose it does,” the creature replies, the corner of his mouth twitching into a faint smile.
Victor finds himself smiling in return, just as faint and unsure of the future that now stretches out before them; they’ve both hurt each other, there’s no denying it even though he doesn’t think either of them will try to. Not now after everything, not after how dangerously close they came to a point of no return.
A comfortable silence falls over them, nothing more needing to be said at the moment, sides carefully, hesitantly pressed together as they watch the sun finally depart from the far horizon.
Who is the monster, and who is the man?
They’re one and the same, impossible to separate.