"Do you love me?"
"I do."
"Then that makes you my lover." Henrie laughed, sweet and soft. He placed the glass of water on Frankenstein's desk. "You've been hunched over that pile of books all day, take a break." His fingers wandered to Frankenstein's neck and shoulders, placing pressure there, rubbing there, trying to ease him. He eyed the books.
Frankenstein shifted, tilting his head back. He sighed, smiling. "You've gotten quite good at that."
"Of course, for you." Henrie smiled back.
Frankenstein hazily opened his eyes to see Henrie standing over him, watching him, always. He was always there, had always been. They were hardly ever apart, even when Frankenstein had made himself pathetically ill from experiments.
"How are you feeling?"
"Still awful." He was too weak to offer a chuckle or sit up in the presence of his friend.
"Are you able to eat?" Henrie's voice was gentle with concern, and Frankenstein smiled at that. He adored that voice.
"Without bringing it all back up again? Unlikely."
"Oh…" Henrie took the seat next to his bed. "I'll just watch over you then. Tell me if you need anything."
"Thanks…" Frankenstein felt Henrie's hand on his own. He drifted back off to sleep.
"It's fantastic."
"It's terrible." Frankenstein pressed his lips together, his brow tense. "It's just...too much, too costly." He sighed, lowering his head as he roughly sweeped his hand across the desk, knocking the notes and books to the floor as if they disgusted him. They did. "It makes us no better than them."
"It makes us stronger." Henrie kneeled to the floor, picking up a book, holding it tightly. "Isn't that what you've always wanted?" He looked up at Frankenstein. "We've worked so damn hard, and you're just going to throw it all away?" Something like sadness or disappointment or frustration creased his face. "Dark Spear, Frankenstein, will be our savior." Maybe it was desperation.
Frankenstein shook his head. "It won't; it can't. I might be called a demon, but I don't want to make one." He looked sorrowfully down at his companion. "I'm sorry, Henrie."
Henrie swallowed tightly, holding onto Frankenstein's gaze. He spoke quietly, placidly, like the sweet sea, "I am as well."
Dark Spear stood before him, a horror.
So it was so.
Frankenstein looked forward and steeled his countenance. Dark Spear was everywhere, pushing him back with a corrosive force. And when he reached forward to take them up, to take his responsibility, they wailed, they rejoiced, another soul would join them. Frankenstein couldn't tell when he stopped screaming or if he ever really stopped at all.
Henrie was watching him, as he always did. Frankenstein would miss those warm brown eyes, eyes that had seen him at his very best and very worst: eyes that were on him now; they made him feel like the center of the world.
"I did what needed to be done. The Union helped," Henrie said.
"Do you know? How many people were sacrificed for this?" Dark Spear was searing up his arms, vengeful fire.
"Not enough," was Henrie's reply. "How does it feel? Is it godlike?"
"It's a monster."
"Says the monster."
Frankenstein looked at him with wide eyes, breath almost leaving him had it not been so painful to breathe. With a clawed hand, he slammed Henrie against the wall by his shoulder. There was little resistance. He held him there, closely, intimately. "I love you, I loved you, you know," he said quietly, a tender whisper.
"I'm sorry you did." Henrie felt Dark Spear's fire blossom from his abdomen, felt it pollute his veins and choke him, the black and purple swirling around them both. Henrie smiled. Frankenstein would miss that smile. "But at least now, we'll always be together…" It swallowed him. "...lover."
Frankenstein was still. He sank to his knees on the bruised ground. He lowered himself until his forehead touched the dirt. His shoulders were shaking. He laughed. He wept. It was painful to breathe.
(In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Henry Clerval is Victor Frankenstein's dear, morally upstanding friend who is too good to be real and acts as the foil to Frankenstein's character but does not stop him from making his monster; hence, Henrie, who lets the monster, Dark Spear, be created.)
