Mauerbauertraurigkeit: The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like.
Three's a crowd and all that.
He'd said as much to Igor in his letter, but there was so much more he wished he could have told him. How could he express jealousy at a time like this? A time when he should have just been grateful to be alive, that Igor was alive? Why did it gnaw at him so that he wanted to be the one Igor rushed to in relief? Better not to question why. Better only to push it down deep, gain some distance, stop caring so much.
Besides I think you've probably had enough of my work.
How much pain had he caused? In the last year alone, creating monsters, making demands, striving for immortality? He had failed in the end. More than failed, knowing that the lives he had inadvertently taken and those he had altered forever would have been spent in, if not the idylls of peace,then at least blissful ignorance of what lay beyond death. His work. He was ashamed to own it and he was ashamed of who he'd let it make him. He'd once been full of ideals and promise. Now what was he? A fugitive? A mad scientist? Doing the devil's work as Turpin had suggested? Victor scarcely knew. All he knew was instead of replacing fear with hope, he'd done quite the opposite.
Truth be told, you've probably had enough of me.
Worst of all, he knew that he had alienated the one friend – the only person – who understood him. The only living being upon this earth he cared for. He had taken a fragile trust, a friendship and crushed it between his hands as if it had been made of flimsy, delicate glass. The shards stuck in his hands and made him bleed, made him weep. Whatever he and Igor had been – and whatever they could have been – had been decimated by his careless hand.
One could only spend so much time creating monsters before becoming one. And somewhere along the way, Victor had crossed the line. Unfit for human companionship, he sentenced himself to a life of solitary study, of travel.
Our time together is done.
Our achievements are in the past…
And our discoveries will probably never be known.
He didn't know what hurt worse: consigning himself to obscurity or fading in Igor's memory.
But I will always think of you fondly.
And always as my friend.
…
You are and will always remain my greatest creation.
And that was why he had to leave. He was a monster and Igor was a man. Igor was happy, with a future before him. And Victor, enamored with his greatest creation, would never have the courage to say what he really felt. He could sign the letter "Your friend" but he would always wish he had dared sign it "Love".
But he was a monster and Igor was a man. And as Victor well knew, monsters would always eventually kill men, even those who most helped to shape them.: