~ beating — to his doorstep.

Clouds circle overhead, and he needs candles to illuminate his work. Final stitch in place, Victor positions the table and affixes the frame that would channel lightning once more into her.

What had taken her from him would bring her back.

~ to discount intellect. If we exist anywhere, surely it must be the brain?

Victor is brilliant, but the world has not yet considered things like traumatic brain injury.

Her brain, he would keep.

And he does not ask where his contact gets the heart that he brings — fresh and all but still ~

~ too badly damaged by the strike. He could start it again — managed to with little jolts of electricity — but its rhythm was erratic and likely would stop soon after animating her fully.

And while the Egyptians might have kept the heart and discarded the brain, Victor was too much the scientist ~

~ right foot, however, had been badly burned, so he found her new ones. A young mother who had died in childbirth gifted Elisabeth those.

Victor never paused to consider where he believed the seat of the soul to be. The Egyptians might have said that the ka resided in the heart, but hers had been~

Which is why he /must/ bring her back. He cannot live with her last thoughts of him being poor ones.

He has such a small window of time once her body is prepared.

Victor kept her mostly as she was — he loved her too much to change what he already viewed as perfection. Her left hand and ~

“That child’s parents might think you mean him harm,” he answers finally. “Those who are big like us generally do not have children for friends.”

He thinks he did alright with that one.

Victor glares.

~ hear her voice telling him /no/.

But he pushes it aside, rolls up his sleeves, and begins.

With a single cut.