"The Great Herbert West" by Replica of Twilight, this time. :) Though portrayed in a more positive light in terms of motherhood to the man we know and love.

Chapter Thirteen

Confessions and Aphrodisia

After living in the same home with him and working by his side for a whole year, gone from simply re-animating whole human bodies to severed parts – now creating this man downstairs in the embalming room with Dan's heart in the center, which made it all the more difficult. She'd wanted to get away before, but then he presented Dan's heart, promising her they would make him live again. She'd doubted it at first because her born-Puritan beliefs held the notion that God and God only would give and take the soul, not human hands. But she'd been haunted for so long that it was time to end it by bringing the Dan she knew back to life.

Now there was another Daniel at the hospital, sick and dying alone, whose ring which was supposed to be his intended's before she left him now adorned the same hand which bore the other ring the OTHER Daniel gave her. That was two men with the same name she was about to lose...but no. She swore to do everything she could to save the other Daniel who was still alive, for now. And what made things even more complicated – and happier – was that he told her, when she should have expected it, that he loved her. Her heart was picking up faster with every second that passed; part of her was saying that it was wrong and unprofessional for a doctor to fall in love with the patient, but now she was beginning to see her chance at a normal life with him if only...

And look at the other man in front of you. Herbert had just made a slip-up about his mother, a mother she never thought he would have, or even if he ever did, why didn't he ever talk about it?

But this she knew already: he lost a mother like I lost mine. "Herbert?" she asked softly when he didn't respond. Growing concerned, she reached out and put her hand on his shoulder only for him to jerk back and whip around, glaring with pure murder and defense. She flinched and backed away, setting the cat down on the table. She'd overstepped a boundary, now that she thought of it. After all these months, she had no answers about him until now, but there was still so much to learn about him and his...mother. Did he have any other relatives around?

"I shouldn't have said that," he spat, his head shaking once. "I should never have said that." He turned away and stalked out of the kitchen, leaving her baffled as ever, and hurt. There was the sound of a door slamming, so she assumed he was in the basement again, at work to take his mind off of this. She sighed and looked down at Éclair again, who was licking his paw out of habit. She laughed and picked him up again, his soft, furry body the only source of comfort as she sat down to ponder what had just happened. It felt good to have a new animal in the house again.

That anger and regret...she dared to say that Herbert West acted like a human being. Correction, she'd seen a number of things in him, from undaunted fury at failure and frustration at her when she didn't agree with him half the time, but when he finally let loose the mention of a mother, now she was certain that Herbert wasn't wholly the obsessed, ice-cold madman he made himself.

Her feelings were confused. There were two living men in her life. One who was her patient and dying, having admitted he loved her just today, but she couldn't tell him just yet because even though she did care about Daniel, she just couldn't say the words she once said to the Dan whose heart rested unbeating for now.

And the other was a certain spectacled, collar-shirted scientist who put the blinders against everything else but his life's work. However, he cared about her, too, because he had been there for her when she fell to typhoid and when she was wounded in Peru; Herbert was her only companion all this time...was she actually starting to fall for him, too? Girl, you're in a triangle right now. You need to fix this soon before it blows up.

Knowing Herbert, he was too angry to speak to her, much less want any form of contact with him. She had none for herself but their new "baby" who jumped off the table and began to mewp at his new surroundings. At the same time, she felt it: the sudden wave of nausea that she suddenly bolted for the sink and unleashed it from her stomach. Meg felt like her head was spinning and her vision whitening that she had to sit down and put her head on the table, resting until she was certain she was all right. Taking a few deep breaths, hearing her heart at the same time, Meg slowly lifted her head and opened her eyes. Nausea was the least of her worries; right now she wanted nothing more than to think of how to patch it up with Herbert and get him to open up. Which wasn't going to be easy.

She made dinner, which was lasagna, but Herbert didn't come upstairs. She fed herself because of a sudden insatiable appetite, and Éclair smacked hungrily on his tuna. Now she was more than ready for a nice hot bath, surrounded by plum-purple walls interrupted by white tiles and porcelain underneath an old-fashioned chandelier. By the time she was finished, she slipped on her long red plaid robe and made her way for the lab door. Herbert's grudges lasted as long as he wanted to, but it was worth a try. Meg took no nonsense from anyone no matter what.

The door wasn't locked, but she had free access and went in anyway. Herbert was hunched over the legs of the bodybuilder recovered earlier, and he was already working on connecting the ankles of the feet to the ends of the legs. The feet of a dancer to the legs of a muscle man. And those arms belonging to the same man. His back was facing her; either he heard her and chose to ignore her, or he was simply caught up in his work and didn't hear the door open. He was humming noncommittally as he sutured muscle to muscle with tender loving care that would have disturbed another individual. Finally, her nerves were worked enough by the time he was finished. "You can stop pretending I'm not here."

His whole body tensed and whirled around. The instruments were still glimmering with blood, little droplets hitting the floor quieter than dewdrops into a pond. It was menacing enough to match his fury at simply seeing her. "I most certainly don't remember calling for your aid," he said coldly.

"I thought we were in this together," Meg said smoothly. "Starting work ahead without me?" She nodded at the bloody tools in his hands. "Or is it simply just you all along?"

"He is my creation," Herbert answered, setting the deadly blades down, behind him. "I thought of every part this far, planned every step, and you hardly act unless I ask you to."

This was so stupid; she didn't come down here to discuss their "man" on the table. She came down here to apologize. "Look, I'm sorry for upstairs. I didn't mean to –"

He cut her off brusquely. "You most certainly meant everything," he ground out. "You're brutally honest, not afraid to take a step over boundaries never meant to be crossed. I know you too well. We share the same house, or have you forgotten?" His eyes narrowed dangerously.

"If we share the same house," Meg seethed, her temper losing fast, "then perhaps you should start telling me about yourself. Isn't that what two people who live together do? Communicate, share things? There IS more to learn and do than just this." She gestured behind him to the gathered parts thus far. "How many times will I have to tell you that?"

A tense silence filled the room, Herbert's face hard – or rather, trying to remain that way – before it softened, and he sighed, tugging off his apron and surgeon gear, walking her way, and hanging them beside the door. She stepped aside, opening the door for him and letting him go upstairs first. He led her to his room and sat down at the makeshift desk, turning his back to her and saying nothing.

"In answer to your question, yes," he said softly, after moments of pause. Meg had her ears alert and at attention, sitting down on the side of the bed, and turning around to face him. He lowered his face halfway so he avoided making direct eye contact as he finally spilled the beans. "My mother died when I was a child."

So I WAS right; we both lost our mothers. Now he has my full sympathy, she thought, finally feeling her heart breaking. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "Your father?"

"I never knew him," Herbert answered. "I was too young to understand, but I believe he left before I was born. I was raised by my mother as well as her adoptive parents, Dr. Hans Gruber and his wife, in Zurich." His voice was steady and held no trace of emotion, which unnerved her. He was so good at hiding his feelings, doing his best to preserve his dignity. "His wife was no positive role model for me, which you might understand one reason I was never with a woman...before you," he said slowly. "She blamed my mother because she was unable to have a child of her own, so therefore, after Mother died, the troubles were put on my shoulders."

Meg's anger bubbled as she tried to picture in her own way how a horrible woman like Dr. Hans Gruber's wife would do such a thing to the child she adopted to make up for what she couldn't have; she always thought family was about love, protection, and guidance, so for that woman to pass the anger onto her adopted grandchild was worse than she could imagine. It made her want to see this...family of his if that could even be called one with that horrible exception Herbert spoke of. "Do you have a picture of them?" He nodded and opened the top and only drawer of the desk, handing her a brass-framed photograph. She stood and walked over, taking it in both hands. There was an older man with lightening hair, tufts on either side of his head, accompanied by a woman short of a couple of years than him, her slightly graying dark head in a painfully tight bun, as well as a stunningly beautiful blonde woman in a plain but flattering dress; in her arms, she held a young boy whose glasses appeared too large for his sweet little face, no different than he was today. It made her want to laugh, but with the way the man he was now was looking at her, she held it to herself.

"It's a...sweet family," Meg said slowly. She would have called it "beautiful" if not for the fact that the older woman was the one she regarded dispassionately. Giving it back to him, she asked, "How did your mother die?"

Herbert set the picture on the desk; he'd had it in the drawer the whole time, keeping it from her for his own reasons, but now he saw fit to keep it out. "She was...murdered in front of me when I was seven years old. She was shot by a homeless person in the street. Before that, we lived in a middle-class but otherwise content home. I was the social outcast at school with the big glasses as you know I am now," he added with a small yet forced smile. "You could say Dr. Gruber was my grandfather if not by blood. Mother was orphaned at a much younger age than I was when she died. However, she was barely out of college when she had me; my father, wherever he is now, not that I really care –" He snorted. "– didn't want anything to do with us. Gruber's wife was even more disgusted when I came into the picture, wished I'd died when I had the chance. Mother almost lost me, you see, but I eventually came into the world as any newborn would."

He paused to take a few steady breaths even though it was clear that the task was difficult. "She loved me even though she planned on marriage first, child next. Gruber loved me, but his wife didn't." He then reached out to her and delicately wiped his finger down her left cheek. Frowning, Meg reached and brought her finger back down only to find the clear shine of a tear. When did she start crying now? She'd been so engrossed in the story that she'd been completely oblivious to her surroundings. Herbert's story of loss differed in some ways from her own, but –

"What was her name?" she asked, ultimately finding her voice. "And what was she like?"

He smiled slightly. "Her name was Elizabeth. Elizabeth West. So beautiful...she had liquid golden hair and the most vivid blue eyes. You remind me so much of her."

Her heart leaped into her throat when the confession settled into her system, overtaking her entire perception. He – I remind him of his mother? Is that why he's so...fixated on me, wanting me to stay with him so badly? She opened her mouth before she heard the most shocking thing she never thought she would ever see or hear from him:

He was...crying. Herbert West, Re-Animator, was crying. He took off his glasses and laid them on the desk as he put his head down in his arms, his body wracking with his laments. She reached out, the compassionate side of her taking over, and she wrapped her arms around him and rested her head on his shoulder, breathing in the smell of musk and blood. It was an unusual combination, but it was a good sort of strange. To take in the smell of him as well as the feel of his body shaking beneath hers and sending tremors throughout, she shoved all her criticisms aside for now and focused on the truth about the man in her arms which she had just uncovered.

Herbert West was a human being. He was born like she was, lost the main woman in his life who was supposed to be his role model in how women were supposed to be, but no, the wife of the man who raised him into adulthood and mentored him in medical school before things soured when he died, thus beginning everything that followed, ruined that chance. She couldn't have children of her own; if someone wanted a child bad and adopted another, why were some – if not all – so cruel like her?

It all makes sense now, she thought as she raised her head and looked at the back of Herbert's shiny dark head. Herbert is human as much as I am, just made out to be something everyone else calls a lunatic. He has a soul and a heart but chooses not to acknowledge it. He actually cares about humanity...in his own way.

There was a muffled phrase that suddenly came from him, but she couldn't understand because his head was buried in his arms. He raised his head. "Please don't leave me," he begged. His eyes were red-rimmed and his cheeks wet. Meg felt like crying herself, and she reached out to cup one cheek in her hand; his skin burned against hers. "Please," he repeated, voice squeaking now like a child begging his parents not to take something from him just because of a little mistake he made.

"I'm not leaving you." She leaned over and took him into her arms, his head leaning against her and burying his face into the warm swells of her breasts. The feeling was pleasant and comforting.

"Tell me you hate me for forcing you to stay with me."

Meg froze; she had not been expecting that. Of course, a part of her hated him, but at the same time, she didn't. She couldn't figure it out as much as she knew she had to. "No, I don't hate you. But you do get on my nerves half the time," she confessed.

"I'm just like you in this manner," he continued softly. "My mother's death drove me to where I am now, as did Hans Gruber and everything he taught me. I keep losing everyone I love, and that was why I never found solace in another human being...until you and...Dan." He paused there to let her take that in. "Hans' wife died when I was fourteen, of ovarian cancer. It was just me and him after that, through my schooling years until that day my life changed."

His life changed...her life changed...both lives involving death and re-animation; his started with losing people he loved only for himself to bring them back and in turn, entering her life and introducing her to his ways...fate had brought them together.

Suddenly, the moment was over, and Herbert pulled himself back to look at her, his face stoic. "Meg, why are you so suddenly interested in my life?" he asked. She shrugged.

"It was my fault you blurted out your mother earlier. And now that you've told me everything, it feels like we're more on the same page," she answered. "Keeping secrets never help anyone."

He scoffed and stood, backing away from her arms altogether. "I've kept this to myself all my life. I never intended to tell anyone about myself."

Meg jumped up so she stood and faced him, chin stuck out at him. "Herbert, you've got to stop pretending that you have nothing to hide because I never did that to you," she ground out. "Stop running from the problem you are having with yourself and other people, and start facing it. If you want me to stay as your partner in this, the first person who ever took you seriously, start by allowing me to make you feel better about yourself."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Oh, and however would that be?"

~o~

She opened the front of her robe to show her bare breasts to him. Herbert's blood was on fire now, from both the sight as well as his irritation at her successfully getting him to finally tell her about his family. It wounded his vanity, but at the same time...she understands me more now. She pried because she wanted to understand me. It feels...wonderful to have someone else know now. But he couldn't say that he would start opening every treasure box of private thoughts and spill whatever other secrets he had. "You minx," he growled.

She laughed and dropped the rest of her robe to the floor and took a single step towards him, pressing her body against his. The familiar aroma of her after-bath orchard aroma enflamed his senses as he sucked in more than enough to burn his lungs, too. "Minx now, is it?" she teased. "And what else did you call me before? Intuitive was definitely one of them."

"Hmm..." Herbert smiled at the memory of the morning after their first time, the word intuitive among his vocabulary. "Willful, stubborn, and most of all intuitive." He leaned down and captured her lips with his before allowing her to draw back and respond.

"Do you even know the definition of that word, and how it applies to me?"

"Of course I do." His smile broadened to a teeth-baring grin. "It means that you know and understand without reason or solid proof."

Meg burst into another fit of giggles. "Speaking of solid..." Her left hand traveled down south and came to cup his semi-erection through his pants. Herbert moaned at the sensation of touch. "...I think this says you need someone to distract you from all of this."

Herbert stepped an inch back, disappointed in himself for removing himself from her hand on his hard-on. "Our man needs me –" he started, even though the next right parts weren't yet found, but he could make use of the other spare parts for practice if only –

"Can wait for now," Meg interrupted, reaching up to remove his tie and pulling it off from around his neck. "I made you so unhappy I wanna make up for it." She looped the buttons of his shirt through their holes, starting from the top until the bottom and pulling the fabric out from the confines of his belted waistline. "Let the good doctor take care of you," she purred.

"Ahhh..." Herbert let out another quivering moan as she began to kiss the sensitive flesh of his neck, her teeth grazing and making the fire in his bloodstream sink low to empower his need for her. He welcomed it with the same longing as he once welcomed the re-agent in his veins, letting her entice him a similar way an aphrodisiac would, with her hands and mouth moving down his chest and taking his left nipple into her mouth to suck. Herbert sucked in a surprised breath at the action, his hands finding their way to Meg's hair and moving through the long, still-drying locks as she traveled down south of his body, over his stomach, and stopping when she reached the destination between his legs, unfastening his belt and working on the button and zipper next.

The realization of what she was about to do made him stop her. "Wait, I thought you didn't want to..."

She paused and winked up at him. "I couldn't stop thinking about Peru, so the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to walk into...forbidden territory and experiment for myself." Oh, the sinful desire in her eyes was too much for him to resist looking away from – Meg was really changing from the good girl who answered to her father and the rest of society and entering the realm of sin and death, as well as sexual desire. Her tongue flicked out and licked the head of his member and then along the underside and around the top, stopping at the base. Herbert gasped at the jolts of pleasure no different than when this part of him joined with hers, the moist of Meg's tongue on his sensitive flesh perfumed with flames and water together.

"Oh, Meg..." he moaned, removing his hands from her hair and down her small back. "Please..."

She repeated it, but only for a second time before moving further to the other areas, kissing and nibbling the sides as well as his pubic bone covered with a small amount of dark curls. No, he did not shave down there; it was the way it was. And then Meg stopped right there, placing a kiss and softly inhaling at the same time. "I don't want you to come yet." She helped him out of the rest of his clothing and joined him on the bed, both of them facing side by side, continuing to make out hungrily until it became too much, Herbert assuming the dominant male role once more and straddled her beautiful body, which reminded him of the goddess of love and beauty, having two different names – one Greek and the other Roman – but they were the same one, and the former pertained with the powerful drug known to induce this feeling which he had for her as she had for him.

Aphrodisiac: a powerful, arousal-inducing drug, the name derived from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of physical beauty and sexual love. His heart sank at the latter despite his want for his partner beneath him, finally allowing her to take the rein and lead him the rest of the night in their passionate lovemaking. I love her, but I fear she doesn't. I have to tell her in the event of time, but then I'll lose her.

Meg moved her hands up his legs and rested at his hips, shifting her body upwards so she could kiss him again – he tasted remnants of himself on her, but he didn't mind unlike her – fervently, her hands leaving his hips and up his sides, ghosting his arms so her hands were grasped in his as she deepened the kiss. Herbert's every cell in his body saturated the inferno of love he had for the woman he so wanted to give if only he would just confess how he felt for her. And if she left him, then she would lose not only Herbert himself but their creation in the basement who would soon hold the heart of the one before him.

And go running to Daniel Adams, who doesn't have much longer to live now. He won't live much longer; I know it. His condition is far too advanced, and when he goes, Meg won't take it well.

Liquid heat surrounded him, and Herbert finally let himself go in the sea of bliss that he shared with Meg and Meg only, the night closing in on them both without a disturbance or any unwanted attention intruding on their world of death and desire.

~o~

His lips drew back into a snarl, the sound itself escaping soon after, as he watched from outside the window to the bedroom of the man he was looking for. He was careful not to make any noise outside; he didn't want to take chances of letting the little bastard know someone was watching him and his...whore. How DARE he take what was his? He'd be surprised if he could even get her away from here where no one would find her.

He thought back to that night – that damnable night. He had her then, but then West showed up with that meddling fool Cain; thank God he was dead and no longer a problem, but that did not rid him of the little runt who humiliated him and accused him of plagiarism. And the final straw…took HER from me…

His back only faced him, but he focused his attention instead on fully those firm, rounded little breasts of hers his headless body had the pleasure of fondling and kissing if it weren't for WEST ruining the fun. He had enjoyed the taste of his dearest Meg, from her breast and was about to have his dessert when that old fool Gruber's obnoxious, arrogant little monkey stepped into the picture.

Meg was just as beautiful as he remembered her, but her hair had grown out, so long it reached the middle of her back. However, it should be him straddling her right now, not the son of a bitch who took his old body from him and Megan….whom he still loved and lusted for even in death. The old saying "till death do us part" did not apply even here; he'd had it all prepared, and he'd wanted to marry her. If Alan had survived longer to see it, but no matter, really.

He growled in his throat – it had taken a great deal of trouble to get that fool Wilbur Graves to give him a new body from one of his corpses brought in for incineration. That brainless imbecile he remembered from his seminar in Zurich, with the theory of reconciling creationism with the origin of disease: "Science is not the hope for life after death, nothing which to further test and study. Upon death for more than hours becoming a day – or more than a single day – science cannot bring them back to tell the tale of the unknown beyond of this world."

Totally idiotic!

The sounds of the cries of the couple on the other side of the window brought him out of his thoughts. From the angle he was watching them, Meg now had West – whose fully naked form he could see in certain ways, and it disgusted him – in a position he once imagined Meg doing to him, apt for the most dangerous and daring. West's legs were slightly opened and pushed towards his chest. Meg was squatting, her rear end jutting out in a way that made him even more determined to get her back, her thighs strained with the pressure of this primitive form of penetration. He growled viciously to himself, trying to imagine himself in West's place, but the cries and actions of him and Meg made it too difficult.

Carl Hill didn't want to see anymore. He slipped back into the shadows, angrily fingering the tie that he'd stolen from Graves' closet of spare clothes when he locked the poor man into his own autopsy room where all the remains from that night were hidden. West could take his body, but he could not take his mind…and above all, he could NOT take away his Meg.

He had unfinished business, but first, he needed assistance if not the mental midget Graves. But where exactly could he get it? He had the faintest idea that this place housed more than meets the eye. Smiling maliciously then, Hill set his course for a certain tomb adjacent to this house.

"West, you bastard," he swore softly, bubbling inside, "you did this to me, took her away from me...but neither of you will escape me. Not this time."

Woo, it took me FOREVER to do this, without making either Herbert or Meg out of character, but also not making it too much like "The Great Herbert West". But I'm actually really proud of how it came out. The idea that Herbert was raised by his professor in Switzerland makes absolute sense to me, the idea which will be carried on into my next story after this. The word "aphrodisia" in the title of the chapter also means sexual desire, in case anyone hadn't already figured it out.

So yeah, Hill's BAAAACK! :D And how he returns is much better than the bat wings he had in the movie. Back with a vengeance against Herbert for not only taking off his head, but also for taking away Megan, whom he was obsessed with. A lot of people - fans and critics alike - said David Gale's return was wasted, and my boyfriend and I both agree he could have done so much more than just going after Herbert in the movie (he could have done something to Dan, to Francesca, or the Bride at least). But now that Meg is alive and the roles of her and Dan switched, Hill's goal should be obvious. (evil grin)

Up next: an old friend returns in the picture and Herbert and Meg gather the next to last pieces of the puzzle. And Meg gets some unexpected news which shakes her up worse than she already is. ;D Stay tuned!