Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time you remember waking up, you hear a noise. You hold your breath, wondering, waiting. Out of habit, you begin counting in your head.

One, two, three, four, five, six. There is a clock wherever you are. Tick, tick, tick. A grandfather clock. If you pay enough attention, you can hear the heavy swish of the pendulum and smell the must of the case. You wonder what it looks like; the color, the size, the make. With this thought, you start to count the seconds again, up to a minute, before losing track and falling back asleep. 

The second time you wake, you are much colder than you were before. An involuntary shake rattles your body, and your breaths come out in short, pulsating huffs. 

At first, you feel a wet rag on your forehead. Water drips from your temples. Or is it your sweat? The rag leaves your forehead and is soon replaced with a large, cold hand. 

"You are ill," a voice speaks. The same voice from before—the man with a velvet voice, an unearthly voice. His hand leaves your forehead, and you nearly whine from the loss of contact. He steps away and returns, covering your body with another blanket, and your fingers grip it and pull it up to your chin. 

"Your hand," your voice comes out in a whisper. 

Terse breaths leave him at your words. "What of my hand?"

"It feels good."

"I cannot imagine why it would." 

"It is cold," you say. "As if... you dipped it in a frozen lake. Please," you lick your lips. Your chest shakes when you breathe. "I want to feel it again."

The man is silent momentarily, considering your request, before he places it back onto your forehead. Without realizing it, you lean into his touch and your lashes flutter against the thin skin beneath your eyes. 

"You are ill," he says again, this time matter-of-factly. "You must drink water." 

A noise leaves your throat, reminiscent of a petulant child. "Soon." 

"Now," he says, and removes his hand. "You must drink water now." 

You don't remember sitting up, but just moments later, cold mouthfuls of water trundle down your throat. When finished, you hear the thunk of the ladle dipping into a bucket again, and he raises it back to your lips. It dribbles down the corners of your mouth, and you wipe it away with the back of your hand. 

"There," he murmurs. "Lie down." 

"You..." A wheeze ribbons from your throat, then a cough. "You are a good caretaker, sir." 

"...Far from it," he responds, enunciating the F's in his words. You think, just briefly, that he may be very cold himself. "You must rest. I will remain here." 

"Your hand," you say again, but before you can finish your request, his palm returns to your forehead, and you hum under your breath. You're taken with the chill of it, how his calloused fingers lightly scratch over the thin skin above your brows, and you lean into it again, whispering a soft, "Thank you," before you succumb to sleep once more.

The third time you wake, you're entirely coherent. Sweat mats your temples, your neck. Winter light angles through a window, warming your cheekbones. Clothes—new clothes, which are far too big for you—hang off your shoulders and yet stick against your back. Wind sends a tree branch clawing its fingers against the window. 

Suddenly, you feel honeycombed; trapped. The evening's memory is slippery, but you do not know where you are, nor the name of the man who tended to you, and so you stiffen and pull the covers tightly to your neck. Your heart riots wildly in your chest. Your mouth dries.

"You've awakened," the man's voice lilts in the air, and you jump at it. You hear the scraping of a chair. The thump, thump, thump of his heavy boots. 

"How..." Your voice does not sound like your own. "How long was I asleep, sir?"

"Four nights." 

Your mouth gapes. "And you've cared for me that long?"

"Yes," he replies, and does not elaborate further. There's a quick scrape of wood against the floor. Water sloshes and splatters on the floor. The familiar thunk of a ladle dipping in, and he raises it back to your lips. "Drink."

"I am not thirsty, sir." 

"And I am not a sir," he whispers. "Please, drink." 

You make a face but heed his request, taking slow and languid gulps of cold water, before you push his hand away and can no longer ingest any more. Then, as if prompted, a sort of deepwater pressure pounds behind your eyelids. The pain scrapes from behind your lids, down your cheeks, through the canal of your neck, and onto the hills of your shoulders. 

A noise leaves you and you lie your back down on the bed again. The man's hands bring heaps of blankets back up to your chin. "You are in pain," he says, as if he had been the one to harm you.

"I... need to rest some more," you respond. You feel hot, you feel cold. Sweat gathers under your arms. You lie in your own darkness with pain spearing through your neck, swelling into something large behind your eyes like trees sprouting from saplings. 

Without asking, his hand finds your forehead again and you hum under your breath. Your skin is lava against his cold hand. "You are warm again," he says. 

"It will pass." 

"Hm," he grunts. "...You do not see."

A weak laugh leaves you. "What gives you that impression, sir?"

The man does not answer. Instead, he says, "I had a friend long ago who was blind." 

You imagine this man alongside another like you, cursed with lack of sight—this gentle, quiet-spoken man befriending another damned with darkness. You smile at that. "Was your friend good to you?"

He moves so that the back of his fingers brush against your brows. "He was the first person to have ever been kind to me." 

"Kindness is a language we hear," you begin. "Us—those who are blind. And you are kind, sir, as your friend was." 

There's a noise that rips from his throat, but he does not move his hand from your forehead. "Where did you come from?"

Dread swallows you whole, and your heart sinks to your gut. "Far," you murmur. "Far from here, I think. I am not sure." 

"You... were bleeding."

It sounds as if great wads of cotton have been stuffed in his mouth when he speaks those words. It is as if he struggled to choke them out. You imagine them rising up his throat, only for him to desperately try to swallow them down.

"I was," you say.

"You were hurt." 

Your fingers find the back of his hand. They trace the lines in his cold skin; the deep, unyielding scars, etched and stitched and well-crafted. Your brows knit together at the feeling of them. "As were you, sir." 

He does not respond.

To be reminded of something you cannot forget paralyzes you. The men, their voices, their dirty hands clawing at your skin, your garment, thrusting between your legs and into your flesh. With the back of your hand, you rub at your bleary eyes and release a wet noise.

"I do not..." You croak. Something stifles in your throat. "I do not wish to return home."

Everything is silent. So terribly quiet that you can hear the trees outside the window, the shallow breaths of the man by the bedside, the low thrum of his pulse that flits all the way to his fingertips and throbs against your brows. 

Then, a devastating cry. A sob. "If I return home, sir, they will kill me," you say. A violent shiver scrapes down your spine. "They—they took me, they beat me. Touched me. Those men, they—"

"You will not return," the man's voice is strained when he speaks. "You will stay." 

"I must leave at some point, sir. They may find your home." 

"They will not." 

"But—"

A growl, you think, tears from him. You flinch and he seems to notice this, because his shallow breaths stiffen. The tips of his fingers upon your forehead tremble. 

"Stay," he says, softly this time. "You must rest." 

You say nothing else. There's the noise of the grandfather clock again, the push and pull of the pendulum. A bird chirps somewhere outside. You count the intervals between the man's breaths, how long he holds it before releasing it through his nose. You count the seconds of quiet, the minutes of silence, before sleep embraces you once more.

Just south of the manor is a village called Oakbury. The trek takes a day, perhaps much less if he is fast enough, which begs the question of how you had found yourself in the woods alone, outside his home to begin with. 

He does not question this for very long, though, nor does he dwell on the schematics of things. Regrettably, his mind falls elsewhere. Retribution. And so that day, when you fall asleep after you pronounced your fears and sobbed and thrashed at the very idea of returning, The Creature bundles himself in furs and sets off during the night.

He sees great, thin vapors in front of him from his breath. The stars burn ahead; white, dazzling, moving. Through spindly pines, across the winding river, beneath the choking blackness of sky, he finally comes across the village. Dawn begins to break when he sees the first signs of buildings, of flickering light behind windows, of thin entrails of chimney smoke rising from the roofs. 

"Did you find her?" He hears a voice ask into the thin air, and he hides behind a tree and veils himself in the shadows.

"No," another voice says. Then, a hiss. A curse. "We paid a pretty penny for her, too, didn't we, lads?"

"She mustn't run far," a third one whispers. He clasps a hand on another's shoulder. "We'll check midday, won't we? Blind wenches don't get far. Though her cunt would be frozen—"

The Creature does not let him finish.

He roars and, in a blink, the three men are thrown. Their backs are flung against trees, against boulders. He hacks away at a man's skull and pulls entrails out the other. The third man dies before he could even approach him, and as the sun balances itself on the horizon and streaks of golden light fray through the sky, The Creature eyes the bleeding men. 

He moves the bodies so they're slumped behind a home—a home which he presumes may be one of theirs—and he enters it to find it void of life, save for stale bread and dried turnips, and he takes them, tucks them beneath his frock, and he leaves. He does not feel guilt for the deaths of these men. He does not repent.

By the time the sun is high in the sky and is so brilliantly, painfully bright, he returns to the manor. His manor, he reminds himself. The door groans when it opens and shudders when it closes. The floorboards creak beneath his boots and he walks carefully, gingerly, as if this strange home will swallow him and his sins alike. 

He climbs up the corkscrew stairs and finds the bedroom you're in. He wedges the door open with his foot and finds you lying still, fingers fiddling with the blankets underneath your body, and your shoulders stiffen at the sound of his footsteps. Oh, how he longs to take away your fear. How he wishes he'd fall to his knees and take your small, soft hands in his own. Let me tend to you, he wants to say. Consider my protection. 

There is a lot of the Old Man inside you, he realizes. Perhaps it is your blindness. Perhaps it is the way your head tilts at the tiniest of sounds. Perhaps it's the way your clouded eyes stare into nothingness, yet they speak a thousand words, recount hundreds of stories that he, a monster, cannot.

"You were gone," you whisper into the room. "Where did you go?"

"We needed food," he says. It isn't a lie. Underneath his clothes, he produces a loaf of bread and dried, clumped turnips. He pulls a stool and sits beside you and pulls apart the bread. Then, he gently takes your hand and he shakes, as if you are glass beneath his wretched fingers, and he places some bread on your palm. "You need to eat." 

Your fingers are warm when they brush upon his and his breath stops in his throat. "Thank you, sir," you murmur, and bring the bread to your lips. "I... do not know how to repay your kindness." 

Repay? Repay? The word is sour on his tongue. Why would you ask him such a thing? "I ask for nothing in return." 

"All men ask for something."

I am no man, he wants to say. But you do not see who he is—what he is, and so he resolves to silence. Instead, he watches with rapt interest as you eat, the way your tongue would swipe at your lower lip to gather any remaining crumbs. The way your fingers would twist and turn the chunk of bread. Your nails would scrape at the pale crust, sending flakes cascading down to your lap. 

You're the first to break the silence after many moments, finishing off your bread, and your hand reaches up to your chest as you tell him your name.

Everything falls into a slow spin at that. He repeats your name, nearly foreign on his tongue, and he watches as a smile splits your lips, and you nod your head at that. He doesn't introduce himself in return. How could he, when his maker had denied him everything, including a name for himself?

You are so gentle in front of him when you ask, "May I touch your face?" 

He wants to deny you but he doesn't. He cannot. He makes a noise under his breath and you lean forward, extending your hands out to cup his face. A small gasp leaves you, but you do not pull away. In fact, at the texture of his scars, it seems to entice you, and you continue to move your hands along his cheeks.

Slowly, your fingers trace the grooves of his face; scars, veins, and blemishes alike. "And what do they call you, sir?" You ask into the darkness.

The man tenses under your touch, and enormous palms rise to grasp your hands, rough fingers grazing over your knuckles. "I do not have a name," he rasps, and by then, you must notice how otherworldly he sounds. "I do not need a name."

Your brows furrow as your thumbs continue to follow along the deep lines on his cheeks, down his chin. "And what, pray tell, would you have me call you? Everyone needs a name."

Perhaps, he thinks, I'd like for you to call me yours. But words are daunting and merciless things, and they die in his mouth before they surface. 

The Creature does not respond as you continue to feel his features, the deep lines framing his cheekbones, the sag of his upper brow. Interest overtakes your features, and he believes that expression of yours will be etched into his memory forever. "Would you prefer me to call you something other than your name?" 

A feeling akin to laughter bubbles in his throat. She does not understand, he tells himself, but doesn't correct you. How could he with a request as sweet and as pure as yours? How could he with your fingers, soft and kind, pressed upon his mauled skin? His eyes flutter shut, and he sighs out and almost, perhaps almost, finds himself leaning into your touch. 

"Tell me the books you have read," you whisper. "Tell me of a character you learned of, and I shall call you by their name." 

He thinks long and hard, despite the distracting warmth of your hands suffusing his cheeks. He recalls his time with the Old Man back in the cabin, reading books upon books, tomes upon tomes, until his voice was raw and crackling with use, until words burned in his brain and tales unfolded before his eyes.

A name? What name befits a monster? What name is suitable for a rotting husk of a man such as him? He had never given this any thought since his creation, since the death of his father, and he sits on this for many, many heartbeats. 

Then, something is planted in his brain. He concedes. "Adam," he rasps. "You... may call me Adam." 

It does not sound appealing when it leaves his tongue, but when you murmur, "Adam," into the dark, stale air, everything around him sharpens. A bright clarity overtakes the corners of his vision and, for the first time in decades, The Creature feels he has done something right by himself. For the first time since his creation, he does not feel ugly. He does not feel abashed. He does not feel laughable, purposeless, exemplified. 

When you pull your hands from his face, he wants to cry out. You fold your small fingers, so much smaller than his, atop your lap and you provide him another smile. Your rows of teeth peek from behind your lips. He thinks of that smile as the sun, as the smatter of stars, and he wants to collect them, to keep his pockets warm and his heart full.

"Thank you for saving me, Adam," you whisper. You say nothing of the scars you had felt on his face. The unsightliness of them. "I needed to know my savior's name. How else am I to thank you properly?" 

A strange and foreign feeling plunges through his stomach at that. Why do you have to thank him for saving your life? Yet he remembers the vile words he heard the men say, the threats, your sobs when you had explained the horrors you endured, and The Creature understands. He understands, for a moment, your need to thank him. He understands the threat that was imposed on your life, the very consent that was ripped away from you.

So with large, trembling hands, he rips apart another hunk of bread and places it in your palm again. "Eat more," he whispers. "More. Please, eat." 

He's pleased when you do, and for the remainder of the day, he remains by your side and ensures you've been fed, quenched, and relieved from your bladder. When night falls and a slice of pale moon quivers through the window, illuminating your sleeping figure, he thinks of you as a painting. 

Long ago, during his travels, he had found himself sneaking inside what's called a gallery in the throngs of London. Rows upon rows of old paintings lined the walls, bordered with ornate gold and silver. He thinks he spent all night looking at those paintings, lingering, waiting, as if they'd move at any moment. In particular, there was a painting of a woman lying in bed, her hand resting along the curve of her cheek, her eyes lightly shut. He peered at that painting for hours until he stirred himself from that spell and moved on to the next.

And right now, as you lie in bed beneath the thick duvet, with your mouth parted open and your brows pinching together, The Creature thinks of you as that painting. Perhaps a painting that he'd like to hang in the foyer, right at the entrance of the manor. He thinks of you as the most beautiful and ethereal thing he has ever set his eyes upon, reminiscent of Elizabeth.

Though it besots him to know that as easily as you have entered his life, you can disappear as quickly.