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She has no notion of death, or that she has died. In fact, she knows not that she is being born, birthed not by a woman, but the womb of a machine, through the will of a man whose eyes hold the manic madness of greed.
She doesn’t understand pain, not the word for it, but she feels it. Just as she feels the wet lash of rain, the frigid knife edge of a storm’s screaming winds. She feels the coarse press of a death shroud over her lips and all is dark. Had she the language for it, she might think she is blind.
“Live! Live goddamn you!”
Something pounds against her breast bone, fingernails scramble at her thin, tender skin.
Her heart has yet to beat, but electricity sparks in her brain, spreading down through her limbs until at last that thick muscle seizes, pumps. A twitch and her lungs inflate through no will of her own, but of some ancient physiological process that needs not her consent to fill her lungs. The dirtied shroud sucks past her lips with the force of her first breath. And there, she is born, and she is alive.
“Yes!” A voice screams, elated, triumphant. “Breathe!”
The shroud is snatched from her face, her blindness along with it and for the first time, she sees the world.
What a bleak, confusing jumble it is.
The room around her is vast, filled with sparks flying from cables that lay coiled on the floor like the intestines of some great disemboweled beast. Tanks filled with an unknown amber liquid glow, strange, murky things lurking within. Tools of surgery and dismemberment lay scattered around on every surface, still bloodied from nefarious deeds.
And above her, grinning, eyes wild and fierce, is a man. The red of the massive glowing conductors cast his face bloody.
Their eyes catch and she stares. Her mouth opens and rain touches her tongue. It tastes of ozone and cold and nothing could ever taste more wonderful.
The man stares at her, wondering, awestruck, something feverish in his face that she can’t understand. He begins to laugh, hands reaching for her face.
“I’ve done it!” he shouts over the rain, gloved hands running over her scarred her face. “You…You’re alive!”
His touch is hard, possessive, turning her head this way and that. He undoes the manacles at her wrists and she slowly, so slowly sits upright.
Never has she seen such a thing as a man. She blinks at him, watching his erratic movements with awestruck wonderment.
Her head tips back and she looks up to the opening so high up, to the stone colored sky and it’s lashing, furious tears of rain. She looks again to the man and something inside her moves, some emotion she doesn’t yet understand: some day she will know it for what it is - yearning. A need so intrinsic to all living things that it needs no word to be felt and known for what it is - the instinct to touch, to frantically banish loneliness, to connect. To understand and be understood in turn.
She reaches out to the man, her arm faltering in this newborn body, but he is quick to meet her. He rips a red glove from his hand with his teeth and touches his fingertip to the tip of her forefinger. She gasps at the touch, that little sensation of flesh on flesh and can’t help but startle, drawing her legs up until she crouches shakily on the table.
“Don’t be afraid,” the man says, returning some of her awe as his eyes rake over her body. He steps closer, hand still out, showing a pale, lined palm. “I am Victor.”
She doesn’t understand, but she listens, watches. She looks out at him from under lowered eyelashes, her face tucked against her knees, hiding from him.
“Victor,” he says again. He touches his chest. “I am Victor.”
She considers the sound, how it might be made.
“Victor.” He says it again.
She raises her head, nervously licks the rain from her lips. “Vic-Victor,” she tries.
Victor’s face lights up, teeth flashing as he grins. “Yes! Victor!”
His happiness infects her and she feels her face mirroring his own, something like a smile pulling at her stiff lips.
“Victor.”
She reaches for him and his hand meets hers, their fingers tangling before the palms press wholly together.
It’s a new experience for her, this warmth of flesh. She herself is cold, bone deep cold in a way that feels eternal, permanent.
As if finally realizing that his new ward might feel the discomfort of their surrounds, Victor grasps her hand, pulling.
“Come, follow me. I will take you out of this rain.”
“Victor.”
“No, I am Victor. This - “ here he gestures. “Is rain. From the sky.”
She likes the words - rain, sky. But she doesn’t understand.
“Victor. Victor!” She says, because for her in this moment, Victor is all there is.
He makes an impatient noise. “Yes, yes. Come.”
Her legs are unsteady. She trembles on them. She shivers in her skin and Victor draws her away from the noisy, vast room of her birth. He draws her down a gloomy, ill lit hall to a warmer room, bright with a cheery fire and smelling of books and cedar.
“Here,” Victor says. He casts a blanket around her shoulders and wraps it about her. He takes her hand, positioning her fingers around the soft fabric, clenching her fingers until she maintains her hold on the blanket. “Very good. You must be decent. And warm.”
Warm. She likes that word as well.
He stands back from her, his hair dripping, his hands on his hips. “I must examine you.”
Still, she does not understand, but she enjoys the warm timbre of his voice as he murmurs over her. He looks into her eyes, stretching the skin beneath them with his thumbs so that he can peer at the whites. He holds her wrist to count her pulse, tests the range of movement in her arms and legs. He touches and peers at what she will later know as her scars, the very ones he stitched together himself. He gently stretches her skin, testing its elasticity. He listens to her heart and she smells his hair as he does. She finds it pleasant, if a bit dirty. He hums as he listens to her heartbeat and she likes the noise of that. She drapes her arms around him, pulling him close, nuzzling her face into his hair.
He laughs, surprised, pleased, but quick to disentangle himself from her grip.
“Victor,” she says.
It takes the rest of the night. The rising sun catches her at the window and she quickly flinches away as the light touches her bare skin.
“No, no,” Victor says, quick to grab the startled, whimpering woman. “Face it. Sunlight - sun - it’s - Sun is life!”
He steps fully into that new light, extending his arms, tilting his face up, his chest expanding as he takes a deep breath.
“Feel the warmth.”
She mimics him, stepping into the light. It feels like magic, the sun bright and fiery to her eyes but gentle on her skin. Even more pleasant than the blanket, this new sensation.
It contrasts greatly with the cold of the cellar he takes her to, deep in the belly of the castle.
She follows along with him, allowing him to lead her, trusting him as he is the only person like herself in the entirety of her world. She doesn’t know that Victor would not consider them kin. She doesn’t know that his love is conditional. He knows it not himself. But his actions speak clearly.
“Like bracelets,” Victor says, showing her the manacles, jangling the chains at her as if a baby’s rattle. “Pretty. To keep you safe.”
To keep him safe.
“Victor,” she murmurs.
“And a key,” he flashes it before her eyes for but a second before he locks the manacles about her wrists.
The blanket has fallen from her shoulders and he drapes it about her again. “To keep you warm,” he says.
He turns to go.
She senses his intent to depart and it startles her, panic rising black and rapid in her throat.
“Victor!” she grasps his wrist. The thought of him leaving, leaving her alone in this cold, dark place fills her with a dread like that of the fear of inevitable death. As she knows not that dark reaper that comes for all, her greatest fear is instead the fear of Victor’s absence.
“Yes, yes,” he says, pulling away from her with a harsh twist of his shoulder. “That is my name. I am Victor.”
Like her, he doesn’t understand. Though, unlike her, his lack of understanding is that of a fool, of a blind idiot, willfully and deliberately ignorant. Consumed only by his own racing thoughts, his own selfish motivations.
He leaves her alone. Her head bows and warm water gathers in her eyes.
She knows not what to call it, but alone and smelling the salt of the ocean, she cries.