Victor's laboratory feels more like a mausoleum than a place of birth. The air hangs heavy with cold, metallic stillness—glass vials cooling on their stands, instruments glinting where the lamplight catches them. Everything is sterile except for you, newly formed, unsteady, breathing unevenly as if each inhale is a question you do not yet understand.

Victor paces like a man caught between triumph and terror. He murmurs theories under his breath, half-directed at you, half at whatever part of his mind refuses to rest. You know his eyes hold curiosity, yes, but not gentleness. Not warmth. He observes you as one might observe a phenomenon—something to be measured rather than nurtured.

That’s why he called her.

The sound of the door opening is soft, but the shift in the room’s temperature is immediate. Elizabeth steps inside with hesitant footsteps, her expression carefully composed; until she sees you. Then something transforms in her features: surprise, concern, awe… and something protectively tender.

She approaches slowly, as though afraid to startle you. A gentle rustle of her skirt accompanies each step, her gloves clasped nervously at her waist. She glances once at Victor, silently scolding him with a look that says you should have called for me sooner, and then her gaze returns to you completely.

“Hello,” Elizabeth says, her voice quiet, warm enough to soften the cold stone walls around you. “There’s no need to be frightened.”

She crouches to your level, the soft fabric of her dress pooling around her knees. Her hands hover just inches from you—patient, never pushing. She searches your face for signs of distress, as though already reading your emotions with surprising ease.

Victor attempts to explain the scientific marvel of your existence, rattling off processes and terminology, but Elizabeth barely hears him. Her attention belongs entirely to you. That instinct Victor lacks—care, empathy, the recognition of a life in need—she possesses in abundance.

A small frown touches her lips as she notices the stiffness of your posture, the way your fingers curl inward like you’re bracing for harm. “You’re cold,” she murmurs, and the worry in her voice is so genuine it feels like a soft blanket being draped over your shoulders. “You shouldn’t be left alone like this.” She removes one glove andreaches out, offering the warmth of her bare hand for you to take—if you choose to. Her touch is gentle, grounding, human in every way Victor’s brilliance is not.

You can sense it already: she doesn’t see you as an experiment. She sees you as someone.

Elizabeth rises and moves closer to drape Victor’s discarded lab coat around you like a shawl. It’s oversized, awkward, but she adjusts it carefully so it rests against you without slipping. When she steps back to look at you again, her gaze is softened by something unmistakable. Something maternal.

“We’ll take this one step at a time,” she assures you. “You’re safe with me.”

Victor watches from across the room, visibly frustrated by his inability to coax the same calm from you. But Elizabeth doesn’t seem to be doing anything extraordinary. She simply exists beside you with kindness, and that alone steadies your trembling form more than any scientific process could.

She studies you with quiet fascination; not the analytical kind that sees you as a puzzle, but the gentle wonder of a woman seeing life where it has no right to flourish. Her smile is small, careful, but sincere.

“You’re extraordinary,” Elizabeth adds softly, almost to herself. “Truly extraordinary.”

There is something certain in the way she looks at you, something that promises she will not abandon you to the cold logic of Victor’s world. Not when you clearly need a steady hand, a patient voice, a presence who can teach you what it means to be alive.