Chapter 4

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he had imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours—Henry David Thoreau

Caliban didn't fully realize it when her hands left his face. Neither did she, their eyes only stayed together in a sincere union that neither of them understood. They found themselves sitting on that bench with the snow falling and yet, neither of them noticed that either. They were always watching each other, wondering what the other was thinking, but neither having the words to ask. Neither of them could feel a thing. Only the feel of their skin, as they sat hand in hand, and even when it began to snow, there was nothing. The silent sound of the snow falling filled the air. The silent wind moving her hair to drift in the shadow of her face. Caliban wanted to touch her face as she had his own, but he didn't dare as he looked at her, always just looking even as he longed to touch. Vanessa could see that longing in his eyes. She mistook it for something else as she watched him too. Always watching him, embracing him in so many ways that world had denied him since the moment Victor had awakened him from gods rightful rest. It made Vanessa want to draw him closer into the circle of her arms and show him the compassion he deserved, but she couldn't find the movement as she watched him more.

"No ones ever made me feel this way before. You treat me like any other man…you make me feel like any other man" exclaimed Caliban, breaking the silence in the air. He made Vanessa look at him then, her eyes remorseful at his words, but also endearing. She liked the way his voice sounds as it moved through the chill in the air like a wisp of winter wind. It took her back to places she didn't understand.

The words made her smile as her eyes seemed to freeze on him.

"Caliban…always remember that you are a man just like any other. Your heart bleeds and feels emotions like those of any other man. You are capable of love and deserve love. You are a man, an intelligent man…and a beautiful man. A beautiful man with the most beautiful soul I have ever witnessed in all my days on this earth. No one else understands that because they are too weak minded to try" exclaimed Vanessa, her voice quick as a whip with an intense edge that held him as their eyes met almost refusing to look away. She could feel him watching her then, the hairs rising on her neck in response. The dream he had the first night in her home flashed before his eyes then, but it was more then a flash because he didn't just see it, he felt it. Not just the flash of lightning, but her face. Her body as it rose from the water after coming to life. He knew it would never be, but that didn't stop the image from repeating in his mind like the flashes of lightning that appeared in the sky. Hoe Ms. Ives had rose to the surface to be his bride, he wondered if it had been an omen meant to tell him something as he looked at her.

She was a revelation covered in black, her hair a marvel as white snowflakes made a home among her curls. It made him want her to be that woman that would rise from the water in a few short months. The one who would love him when no one else ever had. He could see Ms. Ives as that person, not just because she already showed such a deep tenderness towards him, but because he found himself giving her his heart. Because as he sat there, Caliban knew that this was what he wanted with his mate. A relationship just like the one he experienced now with Ms. Ives and sitting there, he found himself questioning if he could have that with the woman that Frankenstein would create. Would it be this way with her? Could they sit together on a bench someday, like this, and be at peace the way they were now? As he was thinking it, Vanessa was sitting with him still wondering what he was thinking as he stared so intently at her. It intrigued her as he watched her. Because his eyes belayed nothing. They gave no hint of the thoughts that held him so as they sat in the chill of the night. To Vanessa, she found it almost alluring, but also completely enticing as she looked into the dark pitch that were his eyes. He liked the way she didn't look away as he processed these thoughts. He liked that when he came back to himself, she was still there, and nothing had changed. Her eyes were still filled with that tenderness that touched him on the deepest levels of his soul. He hoped his bride would look at him this way. And he hoped she would always look at him that way too.

"You seem distracted…what thoughts have you so listless" said Vanessa, her voice like pure white silk as it touched him. As she spoke her eyes still never left him. They never strayed, but stayed strictly on him, touching him, lingering on him in the close confines of the darkness. Caliban enjoyed that as he peered with a kind of devotion back at her.

Somehow, they coaxed him closer, a vivid connection linking them that neither of them quite understood.

"Dr. Frankenstein told you everything…about how I came to be…about the woman he is creating to stand by my side. I was thinking of her. Of our future…I worry sometimes that things won't go as I want. That she won't love me but see me as the rest of the world does. I'd like her to see me as you do, but I don't know if that's possible" exclaimed Caliban, his eyes finally straying from hers to the snow as it pooled at their feet. He couldn't look at her as his deepest of fears fell from his lips. In the silence, his eyes seemed to ponder the snow, and Vanessa knew he was waiting. He wanted her response before he could dare look at her again, but Vanessa didn't say a thing. First, she needed him to look at her again, and see the genuine feeling she held for him in her eyes. It felt like forever as his eyes refused to meet hers again. She waited, as his eyes peered into the white mystical flakes until she could take it no more. When her hand dared reach out to touch him again, it had its desired effect. Caliban looked at her immediately as her hand touched the face others scorned melting any emotion that had been there before. As one hand touched his face, the other grabbed his hand, holding onto it. She didn't let go and neither did he. They stayed locked in a type of deadlock as they looked at each other like before. With a steady resolve that seemed to exist solely between the two of them. It made the distress which had colored his features before completely disappear.

"What on earth do you mean?" whispered Vanessa, making him look at her, and refusing to let him look anywhere else.

"The whole world looks at me with nothing, but hatred. How do I know she won't see me as the hideous figure that sits before you too" exclaimed Caliban, before Vanessa let go of his hand to hold his face in both her hands?

"Never say such things. You are not hideous, nor have you ever been. You are extraordinary, you must stop seeing yourself the way others do, and see what I do" whispered Vanessa, her face almost nose to nose with his now. Vanessa looked into his eyes and she found she couldn't speak anymore. It was mesmerizing, the emotions that filled her were something unknown, and Vanessa didn't know what to make of it. It made her wish they had met in another time. In another place and as she looked at him, she thought for a moment that they had, but shook it away as she continued to look at him with eyes more kind then he had ever known. Then he might have been hers, but as soon as the thought entered her mind, it left. Because Vanessa knew that wasn't meant to be as she pictured the bride Victor would make. That was who he wanted and with that thought in her mind, she focused her eyes on his once more. Because things would never be any different between them. For he would never be hers.

"He deserves better than the life your darkness will bring him" thought Vanessa, her eyes intent on his as neither of them moved.

"Whoever your bride may turn out to be, she will love you the way you deserve to be loved. She will see you as I do. You, Caliban, are a beautiful man…you will have a beautiful woman to be by your side, and she will love you. She will know that she is a lucky woman to have a man such as you are by her side" exclaimed Vanessa, her voice sincere part of her quivering with emotion at the thought that she would not be that woman. Silence fell as they stared at each other, stuck just like that until in one motion, they moved. Suddenly, neither of them felt the cold or the snow as if drifted around them. They felt a heated sensation that seemed to exist solely between the two of them. They were each lost to their own thoughts, Vanessa's were solely on his lips, and his were solely on her. On wanting to have her for his own even as he knew that wouldn't ever be a reality. On wanting to kiss him just once before he belonged to another. Vanessa was so lost in those thoughts that she didn't realize when her body did what her mind kept envisioning. Slowly, her lips moved, and before she could stop herself, they were touching his. They were blinded by something beyond their imagination as she held his face firmly in her hands. In the heat of the moment, Caliban was unsure of himself as he experienced her kiss.

This was his first kiss. One more then a peck on the lips, but something that existed purely between a man and woman. Something that existed in the love stories he read so vividly. Those thoughts soon fell away though as the kiss progressed and he found he was lost solely to the kiss itself. To her warm lips as the moved over his cold ones. To the smooth texture of those lips and the way they melded against his as if that was what they were meant for. His movements were always unsure, so uncertain, but any thought of that fell away too. Those thoughts were quickly replaced by something that pooled in the center of his chest. A heat he hadn't experienced before that he suddenly couldn't imagine living without. As unexpected as the moment was, Caliban wanted it the second it had begun even as he didn't know what to do.

"I…that wasn't…that was unexpected" gasped Vanessa when her lips finally parted from his, looking at him for some type of anger, but seeing the opposite.

"Caliban?" whispered Vanessa, her voice cautious. When he didn't say anything in response, she didn't move or even appear to breath.

She was just waiting.

"Should we come out of the snow…are you terribly angry?" whispered Vanessa, worried that she had ruined what she considered her closest relationship, but Caliban didn't say anything in response, he didn't even feel the snow as he sat there with her, barely hearing the words as she said them. He just kept looking at her, focusing on her lips, on the way they looked. Before they had been perfectly red, not a hint of the lipstick she wore out of place, but the same could not be said now. She was smudged. Her lips kissed to a cherry perfection. It stirred something unknown inside of him as he marveled at those lips and the way they looked in that moment. They looked ready to be kissed again and again and Caliban found he wouldn't mind being the one kissing her again. He found he craved it as he stared at the temptation that was her lips. He wanted to kiss her again. To take her lips and worship them the way they deserved. To surprise her the way she had him. He just didn't know if he should as he looked at her, unsure where to begin or how. She had simply been looking at him one moment then kissing him the next. Was that all it took? He didn't know but wanted to find out the longer he stared.

He was new to this. His head told him to simply appreciate that she had kissed him at all while his heart told him to do it again. To kiss her. To take her by surprise the way she had him, but he didn't know who to listen to. In the end, he followed that red beating organ that lay pounding in his chest now. Caliban felt as if he needed to be bold. To take a chance, so he did.

"Say something" exclaimed Vanessa in that moment her own fears clear in the sound of her voice. In the way she looked, her eyes peering like a child's up into his, and he saw not the fear he knew. This fear was more of herself. A fear that asked what was going to happen now. He gave her an answer in that moment. He engulfed her words before she could say more. Caliban decided to be bold. To be like the rest of the world and do what he wanted to do. And he wanted to kiss Vanessa Ives, so that's what he did.

He kissed her fully on the lips, feeling as her hands left his face only to settle almost content around his neck. This was the second kiss he'd ever had. The first taking place mere minutes before yet he moved his lips tenderly over hers. He didn't think about stopping, neither did she, they only sat among the chilled tears that only winter could shed refusing to feel its usual tingle. Because somehow this felt right causing neither of them to care if it was or not.