I never expressed an interest in this ship, but I like Mr. Freeze an awful lot, so I didn't really mind all of the Victora requests I wound up getting. They did sort of surprise me though.

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When the news had come, in regards to his wife (if she could still be considered as such) and her miraculous rebirth, Mr. Freeze was overtaken by a strange sense of calm which he hadn't expected. For a moment or two, for the first time in years, he felt much more like Victor Fries than who (or what) he'd become in recent years, and though the sensation was fleeting, this calm—a byproduct of some rekindled altruism, perhaps—remained for days after. He was surprised at himself in this. His mind, his proverbial heart, and his questionably existent soul had all been swollen with loneliness at Nora's absence, but now that she was revived and within his sights, the desire to find her again had dwindled, or at least it seemed shrunken when compared beside the importance of protecting her innocence, his new greatest priority now that her vitality had been restored.

As much as he'd like for it to be so, things could never be the way they were. Victor was less a man now than he was a malignant, cognizant substance, held together by chemicals and mechanical limbs all rattling about in an insulated suit. He would rather abandon his beloved somewhere safe than expose her to his surfaced evils, the things that all laid dormant or repressed in his system before the accident. Moreover, he would rather she remember him as he was. Quiet, gentle, stalwart, and warm. In so many words, a person. Fries didn't feel like a person anymore, whether he biologically remained one or not. Even if Nora saw his new likeness on the news as she most likely would or learned of all of the horrible things he'd done through some third party informant, at least she would never have to see any of that for herself.

This is what he went on believing, for a little while. Like most things, it didn't last long.

He began to wonder as the weeks passed. If his days of committing crime's on his wife's behalf were over, what was there left for him to do? Surely, he'd accomplished much in his lifetime, but by normal standards, at least, his existence wasn't even halfway over with, and there was nothing left for him to do.

What a piece of work is man…

Still. He'd done more in the last forty-some-odd years than most men could do in two lifetimes, let alone one.

How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties!

But what was left for him? Another unmarked series of decades spent wrapped up in a thermal suit, waiting for his vitality to deteriorate and for his person to melt?

In form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—

He supposed so.

And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

He'd long since been rendered incapable of most sensation; physical, emotional, or otherwise.

Man delights not me…

Sometimes he wondered…

But only just that.

He needed a new goal, a new life's mission, as his tenacity had seen to spending the first few he'd found well before his time had come. But he couldn't very well select a passion. One does not decide such things, they come to you as naturally as any other love does.

His mind drifted to Nora again. He'd been deliberating and agonizing with such intensity that he'd barely noticed a month had passed since she'd been cured.

She'd been out of the hospital, living under her aging parents' care but otherwise alone, for a month.

Within that span of time, the man responsible for her revival developed no more sense of purpose than he'd started out with, rendered utterly incapable of decision making or feelings beyond melancholy nihilism.

He wondered how his wife was doing. He wondered if she was… happy.

His kindling ponderances built into a small flame, and soon he had to know. He would go to see her, he decided. But only see, for God's sake. She would never have to know, he only wanted to… monitor her, a little. Just to see. You know, how she was.

He wasn't quite sure how to go about doing this, returning to a city that hated him from several continents over to do what, exactly? Find his own wife's name in some database, trace her to a residence, and peer in through her window? That seemed wrong. But how could he, in good conscience, do something like that?

With an inward, ill-humored laugh, Victor recalled that he hadn't done anything in good conscience in years. He still couldn't put Nora or any part of her at risk though, what few scraps of nobility were left in his system existed solely to make sure of that.

So what was he doing standing outside of a small, tidy, Michigan ranch house— the house that belonged to his in-laws, the house where Nora had presumably gone to stay—at two in the morning? What was he doing breaking into that house after several minutes of deliberation? And why did he later find himself standing at the far corner of the guest room, glancing nervously at the sleeping lump on the bed, arguing with himself, trying to work up the resolve either to stir his wife from her sleep or recoil into the night?

He felt unspeakably selfish for having come at all, standing there unblinking in the dark of a suburban home, form hulking, machinery wheezing, red eye pieces glowing softly like something out of a child's most frightening delusion. He felt his face crease miserably at the thought. He shouldn't be doing this. He took a few weary steps towards the door, only to misstep and trip over an errant desk chair like the ox he was, stumbling to his knees with a heavy thud.

Funny, he'd always remembered Nora as the tidy one between the two of them, but he supposed recovering from a medically induced coma might rearrange her just a bit, at the very least during the recovery period.

He cast a fretful glance in Nora's direction, silently praying she hadn't been disturbed, only to be met by a doe-eyed stare. She was paralyzed with fear.

Full of shame and perhaps hoping to translate his feelings of meekness outwardly, Victor scrambled up against the back wall, curling up like a threatened animal. He hoped it didn't look aggressive.

Still, Nora seemed too frightened to move, and the intruder couldn't help but wonder if this was so because she recognized him or because she did not. Either way, it was a terrible thought.

Hadn't anyone told her yet? About what he had become? Surely someone must have…

"N-Nora…" He choked her name out in some helpless attempt to connect. After a moment of processing, his voice seemed to hit home, and his wife's features flowered into an expression of shock. "Oh!" She slowly lifted a hand to cover her mouth. "Oh my God. Are you—…what happened?"

Apparently she hadn't been told after all. Or at least, she didn't have the full story.

Proceeding an unpleasantly drawn out moment, Freeze shook his head slowly. There was too much to say, and more over that wasn't what he'd come for.

"Nora—" he liked being able to address her again "—are you well?"

Her response came timidly, like a mouse. "I'm recovering," her head tilted slightly to the side, an old habit she'd picked up from her husband way back when, in the old days. Freeze himself didn't do that anymore though. "thanks to you," she finished.

Freeze believed that if he still had normal human skin, it would have flushed, but he did not, and as such he felt nothing.

"That is all I ever cared about, since the day I put you," he paused, stifling a robotic wheeze, "away."

Not knowing how to respond, Nora cast her eyes towards some unimportant patch of rug on her left side, still shrouded by the staticy dark of early day.

There was another pause, a much too long pause. Victor studied his wife carefully; even in this lighting she was plain to see: her finely pointed nose, platinum colored hair, and large young eyes all just as he'd left them. She literally hadn't aged at all since he'd last seen her. It was remarkable.

"Things aren't going to be the way they were, are they?" she asked suddenly, though it hadn't really been a question.

It broke his heart, but that wasn't what he'd come for either. He knew it was impossible. "No," he said.

"Then what exactly did you come here for?" His wife sounded more confused than anything else. Alarmed, perhaps.

"Only to look at you," her husband confessed, "and to be sure that your condition is improving." He stood. The woman only seemed to shrink into herself, knees drawn up under her chin.

The temptation to run a tender hand across the plain of her cheek was almost instinctual even after all those years apart, but what would be the point in touching with hands that could no longer feel? The strange sensation of his cold metal hand could only upset her anyway. He approached the foot of her bed, not sure of what to say. She looked at him expectantly.

What was there to say?

Don't forget me? I'll always love you? Anything?

All of the sentiments he'd been stowing away for his long lost beloved seemed to have disappeared into thin air, as if they'd never existed. He stared at her with an old face, dumbly. Once more, Nora spoke for him.

"Will you ever come back to find me again?"

Victor's frown only tightened. "I doubt that would be wise," he said.

"I understand, Victor." He knew she would. There were tears in her eyes. He knew he shouldn't have come.

They bayed one another goodbye somehow, and Fries found he had a vague recollection of stepping back outside into the blackness, but the rest of the following hours were a blur of bereavement and self-disgust. He had no better an idea of what he was to live for now than when he'd first arrived. His only hope was that his beloved wife would fall back asleep and dismiss his visit as a vivid dream.

Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe. Remember thee!