Work Text:
The horizon was only touched by sunrise, when William decided that he wouldn’t get more sleep and should start his day. No matter how tired he was, he wasn’t able to shake the feeling that something was inevitable about to happen.
Elizabeth visiting him in the middle of the night and beckoning him into her bedroom to share her worries and thoughts, seemed to be an omen of that.
It had been hardly appropriate, but who would know and care? Victor would only use it to nag at them, but wouldn’t really care. And Harlander wasn’t there, which was worrying Elizabeth immensely.
Just like Victor did. Just like the creature did, that was chained in the basement vault.
William was dressing himself as quietly and quickly as possible in the light of a single candle, while realizing that he was once again in a position where he had to mediate the relationships of the people around him to not get crushed between them.
Personality wasn’t something that his family was lacking, that was for sure.
Skipping the cravat and his coat for the moment, William left the bedroom he was sharing with Victor – who was thankfully still asleep and snoring lightly – for the kitchen.
The hearth was cold and the whole room dark. It’s window untouched by the first light on the horizon because of it’s orientation to the west.
Still with just the light of his candle, William got a fire going and put on a kettle to make some tea.
It was cold in the whole building. The frosty nights of early spring just started to make space for the first warmth to foreshadow the coming summer.
A summer he hoped to find filled with joy and laughter, because he was to marry the wonderful Elizabeth. And because he wanted to spend their honeymoon somewhere tropical, where Elizabeth could search and find all kinds of strange, foreign insects.
But he had the feeling his hopes wouldn’t even become actual plans.
… For weeks no sign of Harlander and Victor having his creation to take care of… William had been fine with Victor and Harlander doing these experiments. Did he not help them equip the laboratory? But he never really believed Victor could build a living man from a pile of corpses.
Something like that should by all means have been impossible.
But Victor had succeeded.
And now there was a creature, which Elizabeth was sure was mistreated by Victor.
The piercing whistle of the kettle startled William and he rushed to take it from the fire and keep it quiet. It was too early to make Victor and Elizabeth get up just because he couldn’t sleep.
The tea William had stored in the kitchen when Victor had moved in seemed untouched. So his brother was still drinking mostly milk or water. He wouldn’t judge. They all had their little quirks.
While rinsing out the cups and the tea pot, William was listening if someone had woken up.
There were no sounds coming from above. The kitchen was in the lower levels of the tower, thereby it would stay colder and the delivered groceries mustn’t be carried up many flights of stairs.
But that also meant, that the creature was probably the nearest living being to William – except maybe for spiders and whatever insects were living in the mossy corners of most rooms.
A soft “Victor?” reached William’s ears from below. The creature was awake.
The creature, Elizabeth had been speaking so kindly of. The creature, that Victor said was without intelligence. But it had gifted Elizabeth a leaf. And earlier it – he – had given her back her glove.
Not wanting to talk himself out of it, William was setting the tea pot, two cups, sugar and spoons onto a tray. If he was cold, the creature must be too. He was almost naked and in the dark and damp basement.
And Elizabeth was probably right that William needed to see him without his brother by his side. The creature had become important to Elizabeth in an instant and William had promised her to always support her. He needed to see what she was seeing. Needed to understand were her worries were coming from, when they made her come to him in the middle of the night.
To be able to carry the tray with both hands, William set the candle down on it. Then he made his way carefully down to the basement vault.
The creature wasn’t calling for Victor any more, probably used to being ignored but never without the hope for change. But William heard his chains rattling even before he heard the stream of water.
Soft light fell through the barred windows into the vault, leaving it a with even more shadows. The creature had heard William coming and stood as close to the entrance as his chains allowed. But he retreated back into the room when he saw William and coming to stand unsure next to the stone pedestal where his chains were fixed at.
William wasn’t sure the creature recognized him from his visit the day before. Elizabeth was certain that he had remembered her at once, but she was hardly someone to forget. Especially next to Elizabeth and Victor, William was doomed to be overlooked.
“Good morning, my friend,” William greeted, putting a smile on his face and meeting the creature’s eyes. In the soft candlelight, the blueish tint of his skin and the deep scars didn’t look so inhuman.
“Victor?” the creature asked.
With the tray in both his hands, William wasn’t able to gesture much, so he just raised one shoulder and leaned his head to the side for a moment. “He’s still sleeping. I’m his brother, William.”
There was no furniture, no table and no chairs. Did Victor let the creature sleep on bare stone?
William put the tray down onto the stone pedestal. The creature was watching him with curiosity.
“We have met yesterday. Do you remember?” William asked to fill the silence.
“Elizabeth,” the creature said, while moving his hands and making his chains rattle.
The smile on William’s face was now a real one. “That’s right. She was there with me. She and Victor.”
Elizabeth would be happy, that the creature knew her name.
“My name is William,” William offered again, pushed his reluctance to the side and offered the creature his hand. He always had prided himself to be someone who could do what was necessary.
The creature clearly didn’t know what a handshake was, but he reached for William’s hand nonetheless. His skin was just as cold as William had expected, but his touch was gentle.
“You’re freezing,” he exclaimed, when the creature was inspecting his hand with particular attention to his ring and making little huffing noises. “I thought you may be cold and brought tea.”
Carefully, he extracted his hand from the creature’s. Immediately the creature was looking at his face.
With one hand, William motioned for the creature to sit down and lightly touched his elbow. “Please, sit.”
The creature obeyed instantly and jumped onto the stone. Then he pulled his knee’s up against his chest. He looked up at William and asked “Victor?”
“He’s sleeping,” William repeated. He was out of his depth. How do you communicate with someone, who can only say two names and knows nothing of the world?
But Elizabeth did it. Did it so well that it took the creature only three short meetings to say her name.
William also sat down on the pedestal and the cold of the stone seeped through his trousers. Everything on the tray rattled loudly, when he pulled it closer and the creature next to him flinched away, covering his ears with his hands.
“Sorry,” William said sheepishly. “That was unnecessarily loud.”
After a few seconds, the creature slowly took his hands from his ears and was watching William with curiosity again as he was filling two cups with tea.
He would soldier through this meeting and having a cup of tea with the creature. If he could make his way through the world of finances and politicians, he could do this.
Steam rose from the tea’s surface and with both hands he carefully offered one of the cups to the creature, which mimicked William and took the cup from him. It looked tiny in his big hands.
“Be careful. It’s still hot,” William said. “This is a saucer and you can rest the cup on it so you don’t burn yourself. Like so,” he explained and showed the creature with his own cup and a second saucer.
It was obvious that the creature did his best to mimic William. But he didn’t have enough control over his hands and the saucer slipped from his fingers. With a clatter it shattered on the ground.
The reaction of the creature was instant. In obvious fear, he pulled up his hands and cowered away from William as far as he could without standing up from the pedestal. Tea spilled everywhere from the cup still in the creatures hands and a few hot droplets hit William’s hand and made him flinch. More tea splattered onto his sleeve and left some dark stains on the light fabric.
That was… going sideways really fast. He took a deep breath and wiped his hand on his trousers after setting down his saucer and cup beside him. Then he turned to the creature, who made a small whimpering sound and was curling in on himself even more.
“It’s okay,” William said. “It was an accident. It happens. Did you hurt yourself?”
With careful and slow movements, William reached for the cup that the creature still held in his hand.
The creature let go of the cup as soon as William took it.
“Victor?” he asked again and William was sure there was fear in his voice.
What had he done to his creation?
“He doesn’t have to know we broke a saucer. He won’t even notice,” William promised. Of that, he was sure.
“Let me see you hands, please.” He held out his own, palms up.
Because he wasn’t met with harsh words but with patience, the creature carefully loosened his posture after a few moments and finally put his hands into William’s. But he’d been lucky and the spilled tea mostly went to the ground and didn’t burn either of them.
“There… Nothing happened.” William smiled up at the creature, who still looked unsure. “Let’s try again without a saucer, shall we?”
William filled the creature’s cup again and set it aside for a moment, so it would cool a bit. In the meantime, he kneeled down and started to pick up the shards. He collected them in a handkerchief to dispose of them later.
“I hope, I found all of them, so you don’t cut your feet,” he told the creature.
He was watching him and William could see his lips and throat move. But he didn’t speak and was still nervous.
William sat down again and put the tray between them. Then he gave the creature his cup back.
“Careful, it is still hot,” he reminded gently.
Still mouthing words without sound, the creature took the cup. He brought it to his face and sniffed at it, and then held the warm porcelain against his cheek. He closed his eyes.
“It’s tea,” William said and put a piece of rock candy into his own cup. “It’s made from leafs.”
That got the creature’s attention and he took the cup away from his face, before he reached for a maple leaf on the ground and held it up for William to see.
With a smile, William took the leaf and the creature was giving it willingly. “That is a leaf, but not tea. Tea comes from India, I believe.” He turned the leaf in his hand and looked at it’s veins against the candle light. It had the same colour as Elizabeth’s hair, which he had seen fall freely around her shoulders only hours ago.
She’d seemed like an apparition when she had woken him up, her long hair down and dressed in nothing but her almost sheer nightgown. How lucky he was to marry her.
The creature made a questioning sound and took the leaf back, when William offered it to him. For some moments, he was looking at it before he carefully set it down next to the tray.
Then he mimicked William taking a sip from his cup. He frowned and took another sip, while William watched him with a smile.
“Is it good?” he asked.
Whatever Victor had given to the creature and eaten himself, must’ve been bland. Victor was no cook and he lived in the tower without staff. And if William knew him at all, he had forgotten to eat most of the time anyway. No wonder the creature was surprised something had a taste.
The creature looked at William, again mouthing words without a sound and holding a hand against his own throat.
“W-wwi-” he then started to say.
Because the creature was already able to say Victor, William assumed he wanted to say his name. There wasn’t a reason to believe something else. So he said his name again and exaggerated the syllables. “Will-i-am.”
“Wwwwiill-liam,” the creature echoed.
“Well done,” William praised with a smile. “That’s it. You are a fast leaner, are you not?”
And wasn’t that true… Now he could answer his own question from the day before. How did Victor not see that? Was Victor blinded that much by his own brilliance?
“Will-liam,” the creature repeated.
Most tension had left his body and he sat relaxed next to William on the pedestal, his feet now on the ground. He drank another gulp from his tea and muttered William’s and Elizabeth’s names as if he wanted to practice them.
William realized that he himself also felt way more comfortable now. Elizabeth had been right, that the creature was curious and gentle. It didn’t seem right that Victor had him chained up in the vault without any comforts or company.
Through the window finally fell a small sliver of direct sunlight. The crashing waves and the gurgling little stream of water were the only sounds besides the creature’s muttering. It was quite peaceful in it’s own way, but just as a place to hide away from the world and not as a place you’re chained to.
Movement next to him caught his attention. The creature was getting curious or restless and reached for the lumps of rock candy. But when William turned his head, he pulled his hand back.
“Go on,” he encouraged and tilted the sugar basin with one hand in the direction of the creature. “It’s sugar. You can put it into coffee or tea to sweeten them.” After a short pause, he added “As a boy, I liked to eat it instead of sweets.”
While he was speaking, the creature cautiously reached for the rock candy and grabbed a lump. He was then inspecting it against the light of the candle, before he sniffed at it.
William took a lump himself and put it into his mouth. Sweetness flooded all over his tongue and for a moment he furrowed his brows. He had never lost his sweet tooth but maybe he was too old for pure sugar.
Hesitant, after watching William’s reaction, the creature licked the rock candy. His face spoke of concentration when he put the rock candy into his mouth. Followed by a little shake, that made William laugh quietly.
At that the creature turned to him and, knowing that laughing was a something positive, tentatively reached out to touch William’s face.
William was hesitant for a moment, but allowed him to caress his cheek with cold fingers. Until William took the creature’s hand between his and tried to rub some warmth into it.
“You’re still freezing, my friend. I will talk with Victor about giving you something to keep you warm,” he promised. “Elizabeth and I will make a case for you.”
They’d just have to be smart about it…