Broken Cries Of A Monster
She can't remember when the feeling had first started.
Maybe it was before she had even pieced him together. Maybe it was when she was spending every hour of every day, plotting and planning and wishing. She hadn't meant for it to turn out the way it had, of course. She had meant, in the first place, to just make something that was going to give her unconditional love. Look how well that had turned out.
Selfish, maybe, probably, she would call herself. Selfish but deeply sad. Self pity was an ugly thing, but she had it in loads. He thought he was hideous? If only he could rip her up inside, tear her apart and see the ugly mess that would spill into his hands like they had hers, like she had done so many times with so many unnamed victims.
If he was so ugly, didn't the fact that she was madly, deeply in love with him make her even uglier?
xxx
"Doctor?" an old man had asked, when her hands were up to their elbows in blood.
She cleared her throat, grabbed a cloth and wiped the lumps of innards off to leave her hands shining white and clean. If only.
"Yes?" she asked, pitching her voice lower. The big one with the beard's eyes narrowed like he was trying to stare right through her. His chin and nose tilted slightly up, and he dragged in a big breath.
"We need your help," the old man had asked, and it was over, just like that.
xxx
Vanessa hadn't been surprised she was a girl, but dear god had the old man been. It wasn't that Victoria wasn't girlish. She was, she was dainty and fragile and finely boned. She was smaller and thinner than Vanessa, wasting away for the years she had in that small apartment of hers, Caliban's slave in the darkness, not eating or drinking until she was forced to because of the weakness.
She didn't cut her hair (too vain), didn't try too act vulgar to make up for her girlish features (once again, vain to a fault), but maybe no one ever considered the fact that a girl would dress up as a man to pursue medicine. A girl wouldn't be smart enough to dream up the idea in the first place.
Caliban was surprised when he followed her out of her apartment that one time, snuck out right behind her in the street and pushed her into an alley. She fell to the wall with a thunk and a gasp and she stared up at him with wide eyes as he yanked away her cap and her long dark hair came tumbling down.
He bared his teeth and rolled his eyes and wickedly, wickedly chuckled from deep in his throat.
"What a maker, one that has to parade around in borrowed garb just to get noticed. What a maker you have given me," he rasped, past those ugly (beautiful) lips.
xxx
"I want you to make me a woman," he told her, hand through Proteus' heart.
She was screaming, dying inside. He had killed her child, her success. He had killed him in cold blood, and yet she still couldn't help that burst of happy anticipation that fluttered through her veins and stomach. He was back. He'd come back.
"A what?" she had stuttered out, heart still torn between roaring in rage and pulling him close. Not that he would tolerate that. He hated her more than he thought she hated him.
"I want a woman. An Eve, if you will," he had snarled, and she had stared with dying eyes.
He wanted a woman. He did not want her.
xxx
"You're a monster!" she sobbed, the night he tore apart Van Helsing. "I hate you!"
"The feeling is mutual, demon," he spat, blood covering his pure white hands in great strings and rivers.
She knew those hands, knew them better than her own. She had labored over them for weeks, months. She knew every part of the monster (selfish lover) she had made.
She sunk to the ground, eyes sickeningly wet with tears, and whimpered helplessly in the alley by the theater.
"I'm sorry," she mouthed wordlessly to Van Helsing once Caliban had seemingly gone (watching from the shadows, unknown to her, always watching). "I'm sorry. It's my fault."
xxx
The months she was trapped in the house with Vanessa, the only times she ventured out were to get more morphine. For the girl, the suffering girl, she always told them. They didn't watch her scramble home, tie up her veins and sink into unencumbered, restful slumber uninterrupted by dreams.
He found her like this, one afternoon a few weeks in, and waited until she arose with a heavy headache. When her eyes opened to the dreadful reality of her world once again, there he was, sitting in a chair across from her bed. She leapt up, scrambled back on the sheets with wide gulps.
"What have you been doing at that house," he asked, dark, unnaturally lit eyes boring into her.
"I...I had business there," she breathed out, nearly trembling with the need to tell him she hadn't just forgotten what he asked. She hadn't, she swore. She would never forget the way he talked of his Eve with a far off look in his eyes, one that turned to acid that burned her lungs whenever he glanced back at her.
"Business?" he leaned back in the chair, watching her still.
"I'm not at liberty to say," she coughed awkwardly, scrunching her fingers around the dirty bedsheets.
He gazed at her for a few long moments more, eyes running quickly up and down her form once, then twice.
"You look as if you haven't been eating," he noticed, and she was surprised, almost fell back off the bed with it.
"I...um, I haven't really had the time," she stuttered out, licking her dry, cracked lips awkwardly as she looked away. She couldn't stare at him for any longer. It made her too nervous, too exposed.
"You have to keep up your strength," he muttered, and when she glanced back at him he had torn his eyes away too. He looked almost...embarrassed.
"I'll finish the project, don't worry," she looked down, guilt and shame shooting bullets through her chest.
Ugly feeling. Ugly girl.
xxx
The night they almost died in the vampires den was the best one of her life.
She had come home spiked with joy, fell into the lab of her home laughing with blood covered hands.
He was waiting, rose swiftly when she closed the door, and her smile melted right off.
"Where have you been?" he hissed, and she stepped back against the wall with the force of his glare.
"I've been...I had work," she gasped out past the adrenaline surging through her brain and veins.
"I thought you were dead. You disappeared with...with them," he growled, and the next thing she knew he was there in front of her, looming, hands working bruises around her soft throat.
She gasped again, this time for air, strained her neck up and then his lips were on hers and she nearly sobbed with happiness. Finally. Finally. She felt like she had been waiting for this moment her whole life, like she had been dealt a fate that had always led to him.
His hands dropped down to her breasts, tore through her bloody shirt, and she could feel his body trembling with unrestrained something beneath her hands. Desire, passion, anger even, maybe. She bit his lips sharp enough to draw blood and when he made a deep, animalistic sound deep down in his throat she did it again.
He molded her to the wall, snapped open his pants while she pulled hers right off. He was in her in moments, and they froze for the first time in what seemed like years.
His mouth hovered just over hers, and she could feel his breath puffing out in small pants onto her wet skin. They were coated in heavy red blood, dirty as could be, but she could care less. He was hers, finally, and when he started moving with unrestrained ferocity she thought she might faint. She moved to kiss him again and he reached down between them to thumb above her entrance, and she nearly saw stars from it all.
"Please," she sobbed, arched, scratched, bit. "I love you. Please."
He muttered a sweetened prayer into her shoulder and that was all that was said for the rest of the night.
xxx
"Do you believe in monsters?" she had asked her brother when she was very little.
"Yes. I think humans are monsters. They're worse than any made up one, anyways," he had told her with the knowing wit of a seven year old, and she had nodded along.
Humans as monsters. What a funny concept, she had thought to herself afterwards.