A/N: I was doodling in my notebook, and this happened. I had wanted to write a longer story about Victor Frankenstein before the curse, and before his first attempt at bringing his brother back to life with the enchanted heart. I still may, but for now, this has satiated my feels.
2 parts water, 1 part electricity, 3 parts tissue,
1 heart.
1 heart, strong enough to withstand the pressure, the pain, the grief. Inside jokes, and long nights with only me, a candle, and a bottle of wine. Straight from the bottle, because my shaking hands can't hold a glass.
No, Igor, I'm fine. The thunder startled me, is all. Please, mind your own business. Please, go back to your room.
Alone again, you and I. I hate the way you lie still under your sheet, as if you had never lived. Selfish. Selfishselfishselfish! You didn't think of me, did you? You left me, without asking what I thought about it. Like the time you didn't ask me what wallpaper I wanted for our room. You didn't ask me whether I would be all right without you.
And I'm not all right, thanks for asking. My chest swells with infection from the wound you leave. How easy it would be to let it take me.
To close my eyes, to give up.
I'll pretend I'll meet you after death.
But I can't. What good would that do? I survived so that I could fix this. My mind and hands have been trained for nothing less. I would call it fate, if such a thing existed.
No, Igor! Go back to bed! I'm fine!
…Walter, just between brothers, I'm not fine…
But don't tell anyone, okay? They mustn't know. Not Igor, not Mary, not Jefferson. If they knew, there would be an abundance of awkward faces and complications and poking at the infection and asking over and over and over if the swelling has gone down. There would be silence and consolation and pitying glances.
No one would speak, but all would be thinking it. "Poor man," they would sigh, "Poor, poor Victor. His brother is dead and he can never be happy again."
But they don't know, and they cannot know, until it is time. Won't their jaws drop when they see Victor and Walter walk into church on Sunday morning? Then they will understand the true power of brotherhood. And ours is the strongest. No brothers have ever loved better.
1 heart.
And 1 essence deeper and less tangible: possibly carried in the neurons of the frontal lobe.
Etherized. Dormant.
Cold, sick, silent.
Laughter frozen mid-breath.
But it will awake.
I promise, on all the breath that has ever and will ever pump through my lungs, on all the blood that burns through my brain,
You will awake.
You will awake.
I will wake you.