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As he welds back together a previously broken part of a clone’s arm, Dottore ignores his ramblings about what improvements he could make to him, opting instead to listen to the other bother in his laboratory.
Childe leans against one of the glass tanks where another segment has been put. He peers at the unconscious body and looks over at the Doctor. “You know, you remind me of a guy in a story I read the other month. Or was it two weeks ago?”
“I did not ask.”
“Yeah, so it’s some really great scientist or something who—”
“The similarities must end there,” Dottore cuts him off dryly as he digs the scalpel into the clone’s other arm. No blood comes out: they’re inorganic, after all. The clone just curses at him for the lack of warning and is promptly ignored, as always.
“Would you just let me tell you about Doctor Frankenstein?”
Childe pushes off the tank and pads over to Dottore, leaning too close to the clone on the operating table. He makes a face and the segment makes one right back before they’re both scolded by Dottore for fooling around and being a pain in his ass.
“Why are you here again?”
The Eleventh shrugs. “I’m supposed to have a check-up or something.”
The look he gets is deadpan. “I was not informed of this, so get out or you’re switching places with him,” he says, poking at the clone with the scalpel.
Raising his hands in surrender, Childe groans, “Okay, okay, fine! I’m here because I’m bored and Capitano won’t entertain me.”
When has he ever? Dottore wants to ask. He decidedly does not, in fear of Childe going on a tangent about the Captain and wanting to fight him again. He thinks he’s heard enough about “Capitano’s bulging muscles” and his “beauty on the battlefield” for a lifetime.
“Go bother Pantalone. I’m sure he’ll be happy to talk your ear off about his economics.” And since he’ll have done it to you, he’ll spare me tonight , Dottore does not say.
“I don’t wanna hear about his theories. They’re too complicated.”
“Then go fight something. I’m busy.”
“But I want to tell you about Frankenstein!” Childe throws open his arms with flair, nearly knocking over a jar of red eyes. “Your clones remind me of his monster, except you’re not afraid of them.”
“Why should I be? They’re made by my hand and they are made in my image. Their make-up is flawless and proof of ingenuity,” Dottore scoffs. “It would be like being afraid of my own shadow.”
“Ah, but Dr. Frankenstein was afraid of his creation!”
“Was it hideous?”
Childe seems thoughtful at that. After a moment of recollection, he nods. “Yeah. That’s why Frankenstein was scared of it. It was made of old body parts and a bunch of other unnamed chemicals. Man-made horrors beyond comprehension, and whatnot.”
Dottore makes a face. That sounds like what he used to do in his time at the Akademiya. Well, he still does the same, just in a more refined manner. Speaking from experience, it’s hardly hideous if it’s done in the name of science and research.
“That explains it,” he says instead as he sews back together the cut he’d made in the clone’s arm and checks the rest of his body. “Say, what was this… monster like?”
The subjects he’d tried to work with unfortunately never lasted long. They died too quickly, usually from blood loss or complications due to stress.
“Oh, it was functional from what I remember of the story. Super strong, too. It actually turned on Frankenstein and killed a lot of the people close to him. It died in the end, though,” Childe says, scratching his chin. Suddenly, he hops onto the table across from Dottore and sits there, one leg crossed over the other. He picks up the jar of eyeballs he nearly knocked over a few moments ago. “Are these your eyes?”
“Not mine. I have mine in my sockets. They’re the eyes of the segment in the tank you were leaning against.”
Childe shudders and puts it down, pushing the jar as far away as possible.
Finally finished with the repairs, Dottore undoes the straps tying down his clone and shoos him off. He sits up from the operation table as if he hadn’t just been carved open in many areas, and walks off.
“I think you should reconsider giving me a flamethrower function,” the segment repeats, weaving his way through the mess in the lab.
“Absolutely not. Now get out.”
Dejected, he departs. Before he can completely leave the lab, Dottore snaps his fingers and calls out, “Get coffee!” He pauses for a moment before adding, “And bring the cool straws!”
With his main concern finally out of the way, he turns to his second concern who’s testing out the edge of one of the Doctor’s many sharp devices on his hand. He has to hold back a sigh of annoyance. Childe is so very lucky Pantalone likes him because Dottore would have experimented on him many times already if he wasn’t so afraid of getting his funding cut.
“Put the lancet down,” he scolds.
Dottore moves around the lab, tidying it the best he can because he knows Pantalone is going to be dropping by later and Archons know all that man does is nag, nag, nag. Frankly, he’d much rather they argue about mora than about the cleanliness of his lab. The scalpel he’d been using in one hand and a disinfectant in the other, he looks back at Childe.
“How did the subject die?”
Childe lifts his head up and wipes the drops of blood that had emerged from the small incisions on his vest. “I thought you weren’t interested in it.”
“You compare my segments to a creature you say turns on its creator and dies in the end. I take offense to that, you know? So tell me: how does it die?”
“I think it commits suicide. Out of grief. Its creator died hunting it down and the Doctor was the only thing it ever really knew, so… Yeah.” Childe picks at his nails.
He clicks his tongue at that. “Pathetic. That Doctor made an emotional creature who ended up relying on him and basing its life on his own. Not only that but it turned on him, too! My segments are nothing like that. They know better than to rely on me or to act against me.”
“Dottore, you literally have clones that are children. ”
“They do not rely on me,” he says defensively.
“They sure rely on their mother though.”
“Their mother?” Dottore frowns in confusion.
He is their sole creator. There is no biological process in the production of his segments. He doesn’t have a partner working with him on their creation, so there is no one that fits the definition of a mother in this case.
Childe barks out a laugh. “Oh! Please, please , don’t tell me you haven’t seen the little ones clinging to Pantalone’s legs and making those little sad eyes at him when you yell at them?”
“Their—” His eyes widen. Dottore slams down a jar he was in the middle of moving. Surprisingly, it does not crack. “ The Regrator? Oh, that bastard is ruining my segments! He’s feeding them sentimentality. Useless emotion!”
Completely ignoring his seething, Childe continues talking about his book, uncaring of whether Dottore listens or not. “Come to think of it, you remind me quite a bit of Doctor Frankenstein himself. A man of science—though a mad one at that—who gets recognition at the academy at which they study.” The ginger goes silent and then laughs to himself. “You got recognition for the wrong reasons, though.”
His eye twitches. “Are you continuing your chatter just to mock me?”
“No, no, of course not!” Childe hurriedly says. He is not convincing at all. “I just think it’s amusing that you two are so similar yet so different. While Doctor Frankenstein did some unorthodox experiments because he was interested in the nature of life, you did them because you were interested in the nature of machinery or the… Abyss.”
“Stop analyzing me,” Dottore snaps. “I am not like him.”
“Sorry, sorry,” he mutters, not sorry. “I just think you two are alike.”
The Doctor bares his teeth at Childe as he retorts, “Well, I think you and cockroaches are alike, in your way of persis—”
The doors to the lab swing open. Dottore is certain he’d put up a little sign that said, Knock. Does nobody listen these days?
Capitano stares down Childe who’s stopped fidgeting on the table. “Pierro wants to see both of us.”
He is instantly on his feet, running toward Capitano. Childe trips on a few of the tubes and wires littered haphazardly on the floor but still makes it to the door, beaming at the Captain. “You came to get me yourself?”
“It was on the way.”
“How sweet of you!” Childe jokes. Capitano remains unphased as he turns and heads back down the hall. The Eleventh turns to grin at the Doctor, giving him a wave and a “Thanks for listening to me about Doctor Frankenstein, Doctor!” before he’s trotting after the Captain.
The segment he’d sent off earlier pops in with a cup of coffee, a spiralling purple straw sticking out of the liquid. Dottore takes it and he scurries off once more.
He watches both his segment and Childe go with a sour taste in his mouth. While having Childe in his lab isn’t as bad as he pretends it is, it isn’t exactly fun to have him talking his ear off. At least now he’s Capitano and Pierro’s problem, not mine, Dottore thinks as he closes the door.
He goes back to tidying the lab but his mind wanders. Doctor Frankenstein… I am not like the Doctor Frankenstein Childe speaks of. I know better than to allow my creations to turn on me. They are perfectly loyal to me, just as they should be. I am not so ineffective as to die, hunting down a rogue segment, either. I cannot be anything like him.
And he reassures himself for the moment.
But later that night, as he takes a bite of a sesame ball, leaving jagged bite marks, Dottore’s mind lingers a little too long.
“Penny for your thoughts?”
“You should give me more than just a penny, dear banker. I need a lot more than that for my next project.” When he’s shot a glare, the Doctor relents. “Do you think I’m like Doctor Frankenstein?”
At that, Pantalone only looks bewildered. “What are you going on about now?”
“That’s what I thought.” He shoves the rest of the dessert into his mouth.
“What brought this on?”
“Childe.”
“Ah.” Pantalone puts another sesame ball on Dottore’s plate. “Actually, I do.”
“See?” Dottore crows triumphantly. “I told him I wasn’t— Wait, take that back!”