I was doing this thing on Tumblr last night where I asked people to send me an unusual word + a pairing for a little ficlet based around that word. ...Obviously this one got kinda out of hand.

I incorporate some elements from Mary Shelley's original book, Frankenstein: or, A Modern Prometheus. There's also a bit of smut, hence the rating, but honestly not that much.

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effulgent: adjective
-shining brightly; radiant.
-(of a person or their expression) emanating joy or goodness.

Before the curse breaks, it's her legs.

Well - her everything, really, but mostly those long, long, frequently-exposed legs. They… to say the least of it, they catch his eye. Again and again and again, because, well. They're magnificent.

He keeps a close eye on those legs whenever they present themselves, often at inconvenient times - such as a date with Mary-Margaret - but can he really be blamed? She's wearing those damn shorts, that joke of an apron and - just, it's been a long time coming when he runs into her at the bus stop one dark night. It's the first time he's seen her without her old hag of a grandmother standing guard - which is ridiculous, she's a grown woman - and he wants to touch. She doesn't seem eager, exactly, but not too put off either, and he hopes, at least until the sheriff shows up, that he might actually have a chance at convincing her to agree to a night of fun before she leaves town and they never see each other again.

(His cursed personality was a bit of a sleaze. If you couldn't tell.)

-xxx-

After the curse breaks though, it's different.

First of all, it's different because Ruby undergoes a bit of a wardrobe shift - gone are the thigh-high boots, the short-shorts, even the red in her hair. She's no less beautiful, of course, but less… blatant, now, about showing it off.

Mostly, though, Victor (now that he is once again Victor) has other matters on his mind. He's rather preoccupied with his own downward spiral, and though his cursed self has for twenty-eight years maintained a steady, if shallow, interest in Ruby, his true self more or less forgets about her until the night the stranger comes to town.

It's an… odd night. Somehow, he goes from attempting to kill himself, to looking down at her and saying, "Thank you. Monster to monster," because for all he's just saved Greg Mendel's life, Ruby has saved his own tonight, in a far greater way than simply catching him at the docks.

She laughs a little. Grin growing. And then.

"You did it!" she exclaims, and she's grabbing onto his arms, and her smile, it's so wide and bright and wonderful -

and for all Victor is a man of science, who hails doubly now from worlds built more on logic than love -

her smile lights up the goddamn room and beyond, her grip on his arms is painfully tight for the instant before she lets go, he's laughing with her.

And after the curse breaks, it's her smile.

-xxx-

They don't have much time. There's - well frankly, there's a whole lot of shit going down, and while Victor isn't directly involved in most of it at all, he's certainly aware of it happening. It's kind of hard to miss a giant rampaging through the streets, or a magical shield erecting itself around the entire town, not to mention the various dead bodies that make their way through his hospital before they are sent on to the morgue. And Ruby is, thanks to her friends, caught up in those and several other incidents, at least partially.

So there really isn't much time. And Victor - he wants to take his time, with this. Monsters are a cautious sort, after all, and… well, all right, it has less to do with being a monster than with not knowing how not to be a sleaze. He was mostly focused on his research in his first life, and on Ruby's legs in his second; he's never had a real relationship, but this he wants. He finds himself all too sure of that.

(It should be off-putting, perhaps, but instead it's oddly comforting that Ruby ate her last boyfriend. In a strange way it puts them on even ground.)

So Victor takes his time, what little of it there is, and attempts to do things right. He stops by the diner and smiles at Ruby and tries to learn how to breathe when she's smiling back (it's… ongoing, but progress has been made). He buys two coffees in the morning and gives one to her, which is hopefully more charming than it is idiotic, considering she works in a diner. He lingers in the evenings enough to walk part of the way home with her.

They talk. Long before he works up the courage to attempt a proper date, before he even really realizes that they've become friends (a terrifying prospect, another thing to ruin if he's not careful), they talk.

About monsters and men and their favorite books. About love and murder and Victor's confidence that he could beat Ruby at chess (he's right). About family and betrayal and Victor's confidence that Ruby could not possibly beat him at poker (he's so horribly, terribly wrong). They talk about the trivial and the deep, painful heart of things with equal ease.

Ruby killed her boyfriend. Tied him to a tree and ate him alive. She killed her mother, too, or at least hurt her and then let her die. Said goodbye, and left her corpse behind.

Victor killed his brother. He let Gerhardt get shot, then brought him back to life a wreck, only to kill their father. And then he could not kill Gerhardt, not even when the poor creature begged him. He could never kill his brother - and this is why Victor believes he is the far worse monster.

He asks her out to the movies.

They watch something stupid, and he probably hates it but she thinks it's dumb enough to laugh at often (Victor's fairly certain it's meant to be a dramatic and suspenseful spy film, but there's hardly anyone else in the theater to care), and so he spends more time watching her smile than the screen.

It makes him feel warm and comfortable and hopeful, her smile, and a bit like an idiot.

He kisses her good night four times (soft, softer, deep and wet and warm and maddening, soft again and slow) and walks home, very carefully not whistling.

-xxx-

But they don't have much time.

That movie date is actually their only date, because a few days later, Sheriff Swan and all the rest arrive back from - he thinks Neverland? It doesn't really matter to him, what matters is that they bring something terrible back with them and it's only a few days later that he opens his apartment door in the morning to see Ruby standing on the step, holding a coffee in each hand.

He takes his.

"How did you know where I live?" he asks curiously, and Ruby grins a little, taps her nose. Ah. Right. He's still not sure if he thinks having that power would be very handy or very annoying. Probably both.

He steps aside to let her in, uncaring that he'll be late for work. Whatever she's here for is probably more important, at least until critical patients start appearing at his hospital thanks to the royal family's adventures again (and even then, to his mind, it depends on the patient).

Ruby fiddles with her hair, drinks her coffee rapidly, and then just when he is about to ask what's going on, she says matter-of-factly, "There's another curse."

Victor puts his cup down.

"It's - it's supposed to be a lot like the last one," Ruby says, looking everywhere around the living room except in Victor's direction. "We'll still be here, but we won't remember, we won't be - us."

His mouth feels very dry. "And there's… nothing we can do?"

"As far as I've heard, no." Ruby shakes her head, running a hand through her hair. Her fingers are shaking. "Well, Snow and everyone are trying - I should probably -"

Victor reaches out and grabs her hand before she can stand. "Wait," he says, and wonders how good her other senses are. If she can hear his heart pounding. "How long do we have?"

She shakes her head. "I don't know, I wasn't - this is second-hand from Granny, I wasn't there but - I don't think very long."

Victor doesn't let go of her hand. Instead he starts to reel her in, pulling slow but firm, and she lets him, scooches across the couch until their hips are touching. He rubs his thumb across her shoulder, and she takes a deep, shaky breath.

"I've already got a second chance," she blurts, turning to meet his eyes for the first time since she arrived (and Victor's heart, it's not magical or strong, it feels like it's charring inside of him). "I don't want a third."

His hand slides up to cup her face, he stares at her downturned lips, and in the back of his head a pocket-watch is ticking, ticking.

"Everything I want is already here," he says for lack of better words, and Ruby's laugh is something like a sob. They lean in at the same time, mouths meeting rough and open and all-encompassing, frantic, rushed.

And then they're stripping off their clothes and fumbling their way to the bedroom, Victor never even bothers to call in sick, he's too busy kissing her, sucking marks down her neck and groaning when her long long legs wrap tight around his waist, fumbling with his pants until she takes over - doesn't even pull them down at first, just reaches in and grabs him, fingers sliding rough and desperate and she bites his shoulder hard when he slips his hand into her panties to return the favor.

The first time, they make love like monsters, rough and rushed and ruined.

Afterwards, when the world doesn't end, they lay in bed together, hands stroking bare skin, whispering all the secrets they can think of before it's too late.

(One of his is, "I always had a thing for your legs," and she laughs, wraps them around his head and pulls him in to taste her.

In return she confesses, breathless, clenching around him, "I saw you looking, I liked you looking," and there are no more secrets for a while after that.)

At some point they fall asleep despite themselves, and if this were another story, they'd wake up wrapped in each others arms, with the sun shining in bright through the window and their monster hearts beating together in perfect time.

Instead, Victor wakes up surrounded by shadows, shades of black and white. He's alone, of course, but he remembers everything, and somehow he is back in his homeland. He doesn't know if something went wrong or if Ruby was misinformed, he just knows he's finally gotten what he wanted all those months ago at the bus stop: one night of fun and then a permanent goodbye, because all he can see is shades of darkness and she is not with him.

If he were another man, perhaps Victor would tell himself "monsters don't get happy endings." But this is his world, black and white and he didn't ever believe in happy endings in the first place.

-xxx-

Everything is gone.

To be more accurate, everyone is gone - his laboratory remains, though in a greatly diminished capacity, clearly unused and left to rot. But it is obvious that the last twenty-eight years have not been frozen here - from the state of the laboratory alone he'd be certain, but when he visits Igor in town just to make sure, the man is well into middle-age, married with children.

He's understandably frightened by Victor's return, but is good enough to explain what he's missed and give him a handful of coins before sending him back out into the cold. Igor's always been a decent sort.

There were… problems, with Gerhardt. More accidental murders, an attempted friendship with a kind family living in the woods gone wrong - 'Frankenstein's monster', as they've been calling him, has long since fled to the north.

Victor has nothing left, and so he follows.

The money runs out quickly, but he's always been resourceful and he finds ways to make do. Leads on his brother's whereabouts are far harder to find, but over the months the only consistent information is a single word: "North."

There are women, over the months. Victor isn't from a fairytale, he isn't going to stay abstinent when there's no hope of a reunion, when it was only just beginning anyway. But they are all so dull, so colorless - both figuratively and very literally. Victor misses color. He remembers how vivid it makes things, remembers seeing it for the first time in the so-called Rumple Von Stiltskin's coat - laughs bitterly sometimes that the garment was, of all things, bright red.

The closest any woman in this world comes to reminding Victor of that bright spark is a beautiful lady named Elizabeth. She is intelligent and kind and obviously likes him; perhaps he could have even been happy with her once. But now, all he wants is company for a night and she's much too proper to offer that, so they say their goodbyes amiably enough as Victor continues towards the North Pole, following his brother.

One thing he's never been is an adventurer. The team of sled-dogs he purchases is caught in a storm, he subsequently loses them, and he nearly freezes to death before he is picked up, very luckily, by a adventurer named Captain Walton.

Walton is a kind enough man, although he's an ambitious idiot - too much like Victor used to be for his tastes. Still, they get to be something like friends in the weeks that Victor languishes in the man's ship, attempting not to die of pneumonia.

He eventually tells some of his own story to Walton, in the hopes that it will convince him to give up his foolish quest to explore the North Pole, which is when he learns that the man has encountered his brother.

Gerhardt is dead. He killed himself some time ago, apparently by jumping into the freezing waters when he finally gave up all hope of his brother ever returning. Walton describes the scene with sympathy, but also distaste, clearly having been long since convinced of this world's popular story that the reanimated man is the monster, rather than his creator.

Victor curls up close into his blankets and can't decide whether he's laughing or crying. He stays that way for nearly the entire journey back south (apparently the combination of his misery and the threat of the crew's mutiny has finally convinced Walton to give up his dreams).

Once they reach land, he thinks about returning to Elizabeth. Settling down somehow, finding a job and building a semblance of a life here once more. It takes only a few minutes to realize that he doesn't want that, won't ever want that. It's like Ruby said, almost exactly one year ago: he doesn't want a third chance, all his hopes were pinned on his second. His heart was set on it - still is set on it, despite there never having been enough time, will probably always be set on it no matter what Victor tells himself about being a man of logic, not fairy-tales. He doesn't want anyone in this dull world, devoid of color.

He wants his monster, his perfect fit named for the color of blood, of hearts beating, and she's worlds away with no hope of getting there.

He goes to a tavern and drinks until he passes out.

-xxx-

When he opens his eyes, he sees red.

It takes a moment for that to sink in, the hangover wreaking havoc on his cerebral functions, and it's not until after Victor fumbles in his beside table and pops several painkillers dry (force of habit, as it was nearly a daily routine for Whale) that he realizes he sees red.

He bolts upright, and stares about his room. Because it is his room, it's his bedroom in Storybrooke, and the red he saw was the numbers on his alarm clock, telling him it's 10:39 in the morning. There are other colors in the room - greys and green and brown, and blue when he yanks at the window curtain, a bright blue sky and green trees, color everywhere, it's Storybrooke somehow.

He's yanking on clothes and rushing out the door in the next moment, speeding through the streets and screeching to a halt outside the diner. He has no clue what's going on but he knows it's real. His head hurts too much for it to be otherwise, quite aside from the fact that he'd been forgetting what colors looked like, could never have dreamed anything this vivid, this bright.

He parks illegally and rushes inside, door slamming closed behind him. There's a crowd of people standing in the diner, all looking very upset and talking over each other, and his eyes flit over them quickly: Prince Charming, Snow White looking quite pregnant (that's unexpected), Belle, Neal, Leroy and his fellow dwarves - and Regina, standing close by a man he's never seen before, with a little boy in his arms. There are others, but he spots Granny Lucas, holding a crossbow, and the breath rushes out of him, he takes a step forward -

And there she is. Suddenly in front of him, gripping his arms like she did in the hospital so long ago and grinning, smiling so wide, and she's saying, "you're here, you're here" like she can't believe it.

Later, he learns that he is the only one who remembers the year that passed. Everyone who was in the Enchanted Forest has a vague sense of time having passed, of being sent back to their homes, but no recollection of what happened there. They do have impressions of a sort, though, which is how Regina seems to feel close with Robin Hood despite not knowing him, and Ruby was somehow certain without knowing why that he was gone forever.

Right now though, he doesn't give a damn about explanations or enemies or anything else but his heart going wild, thumping rapidly, filling his throat, aching because Ruby's grip on his arms is painfully tight (she's a monster after all) and her smile is wide and overjoyed and bright enough to bring color to every corner of a colorless world, he swears it would.

(It has for him.)

"Yeah," he breathes, grinning down back at her, laughing for joy, and reaches up to grip her shoulders in return, feeling dizzy and stupid and in love -

After the second curse, it's still her smile.