-Stay With Me-
By Orioncor
Chapter 1: Perseverance
Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, nor do I own the rights to Penny Dreadful. I do own my character, Sarah. Please do not sue me.
Author's note: Hello! The following is my contribution to Penny Dreadful fanfiction. I feel that there aren't enough dedicated to my favorite character; The Creature/John Clare. Please feel free to review. Also, *spoiler alert* please note that I have gifted him with blissful ignorance of the family he once had in his previous life and that this story takes place in present day. Our beloved Creature has lived in solitude for over one hundred and twenty years.
The air was crisp and frigid. Sarah's breath puffed in little clouds as she trudged through the snow. Had it been wetter, heavier, it would have been easier. It would have sunk cleanly beneath her snowshoes in neat waffle prints. As it stood, the snow was soft and powdery and the wind would lash icy drifts up into her face. It was like wading through sand; her calves ached from the effort.
The wind didn't make it any easier for her either, she had entered a clearing flanked by steep rock cliffs hoping to escape it, but instead the wind ricocheted off the high craggy walls, amplified and came at her from almost all directions, making it difficult to predict where to shift her weight against it. This coupled with sliding around in the dune-like snowdrifts, made for slow and exhausting travel.
She stopped, heaved her heavy pack into the snow, and sat down. Unzipping the front of her pack, she pulled out a map wrapped in plastic and folded in half, and a handheld GPS unit. She checked her map against her current latitude and longitude coordinates. Right on track.
Sarah was currently approaching a small peninsula approximately five kilometers west of Nordicap, located and aptly named at the northernmost tip of Norway. There were no roads here, and she couldn't hire a guide; not for what she was looking for. So she was forced to hike alone through the frozen tundra.
She had come following reports of sightings of what the Norwegians called Jatte, or giant, followed by reports of thefts of food and livestock. She had seen this many times in other places; always the cold, frozen places where few people live. However, by the time she found where the creature was dwelling, she found the fire cold and the place empty; like he had some precognition of her arrival and was able to abscond hours hence.
Sarah unzipped her heavy down jacket to retrieve the flask of water she kept close to her body to avoid freezing, and shivered at the sudden blast of frozen air. She pulled down the scarf covering her face and took a long swig, careful to avoid dribbling onto her lips and down her chin. Here, a good gust of glacial wind could freeze it to your face.
Squinting, she observed a large cluster of trees approximately one kilometer north, towards the coastline. Based on the position of the sun, she estimated that she had just enough daylight left to get there and make camp, hoping that the trees would offer some reprieve from the biting wind.
Replacing her flask, she zipped her jacket, returned the items to her pack and reluctantly hoisted it back onto her shoulders and pressed on, keeping her eyes open for sticks or branches; anything she could burn.
Through the safety of the high ground; he watched.
He observed as his pursuer struggled in the snow. He beheld their obvious fatigue as they wrestled through the relentless assault of the bitter squall. It amused him. He himself never had such difficulty; his creator having made him so assiduous, so undying, so…perpetually and exhaustlessly everlasting.
It didn't come as a surprise, it occurred every few decades or so; since he'd resigned himself to solitude and recused himself from the human race. Impressionable people after having read that wretched book, convinced (however rightly so) that it was an account of fact rather than fictitious fabrication, and sought to seek him out. And for what? To capture and experiment on him? To subdue him and put him on display? Surely enough time has passed that the oddity of his wretched existence was not so terribly uncommon? Surely someone had taken up his long-dead creator's gruesome mantle and perfected it so that there were countless numbers of his ilk to study, observe and gape at?
And how ironic it was that people only sought him out after he had ceased trying to conform himself into behaving as the human he had once been, (or may have been, for he himself had no recollection of himself in his mortal life) accepted himself for what he was; a hideous and unnatural thing, and decided to keep his distance from human civilization?
But still they would come, and still he would fear, and still he would flee from them; the seemingly endless procession of posses' of men that would inevitably harken to his home.
Curiously though, this one always came alone. The first time The Creature saw him, he assumed that this lone man had been sent ahead to scout terrain and report back to the rest of the group waiting miles away, and so, fearing the cruelty of an angry mob with torches and pitchforks; he fled.
The second time however, he waited a bit longer and watched from afar. He saw the man enter his former home, find it long empty and instead of heading back to make the report, simply continued on trying to track him. It was disconcerting, what did one man want with him?
Eventually, thrice he has been forced to relocate in order to evade this specific and annoyingly persistent hunter, and he is reluctant to do so a fourth time. This time, should the interloper progress far enough to reach his domicile, he was resolved to defend his territory.
Sarah managed to reach the cluster of trees by twilight. She had just enough time to start a fire and set up her tent before she lost the light completely.
Looking around, she began to arrange the sticks and twigs and burnable brush she had gathered along her way. From her jacket pocket, she retrieved the fire steel she used to start her campfires. She worked feverishly, one to get it started before night enveloped her in darkness, two because she couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. Her eyes darted nervously from tree to tree, trying to find the source of her nervousness. A predator perhaps? A wolf, or a coyote?
Finally, a spark took to the brush, and she began to blow on it until it grew and flared to life. That task completed, she turned back to her pack to pitch her tent.
But her pack was gone.
In its place stood a great dark hulking mass.
Clad in a long dark coat; he stood perfectly still, hands casually tucked into his pockets, only his long dark hair yielded to the wind.
He moved impossibly fast despite his massive size and the limited traction of the terrain.
He gripped her by her throat with one ungloved hand and pinned her roughly to a tree with impossible strength.
Impossible for a normal man, perhaps, but Sarah knew that this man was no mere mortal.
"Why do you hunt me!" He rasped, as if his voice strained from years of disuse. "Can I have no peace!" His golden eyes glittered furiously in the firelight. He violently pulled back the fur-line hood of her jacket and ripped the scarf from her face.
And recoiled in shock when her long brown hair spilled from the hood. He immediately released her.
Sarah fell to her knees, gasping and sputtering.
Looming over her, was the man she had been searching for all this time.
He kneeled down to her.
"Why are you here, woman?" he said, more clearly this time.
So many things Sarah wanted to tell this man. That she had read the book and become enamored, that she had felt his sorrow and his loneliness so closely that she had become convinced that he was real. How she began searching for him, and how close she had come to finding him. How she had rehearsed in her head hundreds of times exactly what she would say to him should they ever meet, but her coughing and breathless panting left her unable to articulate anything and she lost her moment.
Her creature then began searching her pack and with little effort, found her precious copy.
He sighed heavily and lifted her up like a ragdoll against the tree into a sitting position. Her breathing steadied. Finally, she felt like she might be able to speak.
"I-" So quickly she never saw it coming, her creature slammed her head back against the tree, knocking her out cold.
The creature hoisted her up over his shoulder, picked up her overloaded pack as if it were empty, kicked a mound of snow into her little campfire; effectively snuffing it out and headed home.
A/N: And so ends part one of the plot bunny that has been running circles in my brain. I tried really hard to match the Creature's intelligence and poetic mastery of the English language. Please read and review.