Rose stood before him, sunlight soft upon her face, her gloved hands folded neatly before her.
She returned the smile, demure but edged with curiosity. "Well then, sir… perhaps you might enlighten me."
"Michael," he said simply. "Dr. Michael Morbius." He offered the faintest bow of his head.
"A doctor," Rose repeated, her tone somewhere between impressed and amused. "That explains your manner… and your eyes."
"My eyes?"
"They have the look of one who observes far more than he chooses to say."
Michael huffed a quiet laugh. "Perhaps."
A breeze moved across the deck, ruffling a few strands of her auburn hair loose from her hat, letting them dance around her face. Her eyes bright, conflicted, searching held his with a mix of resolve and apology.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then...
"Mr. Morbius, I—"
"Michael," he corrected softly, his voice warm but not presumptuous. "Michael is quite sufficient."
Rose breathed out, visibly gathering her courage. "Very well… Michael. I feel utterly foolish standing here. It has taken me half the morning simply to work up the nerve to approach you."
He set the book aside, giving her his full attention. "You've succeeded. You're here."
"Yes." She swallowed. "Here I am."
Her voice softened. "And I wished… first… to thank you. Not only for pulling me back last night, but for holding your silence when it would have been far easier to speak."
"You needn't thank me for that, Rose." His tone was honest, steady.
Her name in his voice seemed to soften something inside her. She exhaled shakily.
She let out a shaky breath, trying for a laugh and failing. "I imagine you think terribly of me. Some… pampered little wretch who decided she'd had enough of her feather-pillow life and tried to jump off a perfectly good ship."
Michael's eyes narrowed just a touch, not unkindly, but with a weight behind them she hadn't expected.
"Funny," he murmured, "that's not at all what went through my mind."
Rose blinked, thrown. "No?"
"No." He leaned back on the bench, arms loosely folded, as if holding himself in check. "I wasn't thinking 'spoiled girl.' I was thinking…"
He hesitated, then looked straight at her. "…what could crush someone so completely that the freezing Atlantic felt kinder than taking one more step forward."
Her breath caught but Michael wasn't finished.
"And I'll be honest," he added, lips tightening, "part of me was angry. Not at you. Just… at the thought of someone throwing away what people like me have bled and clawed to keep."
Rose's eyes widened; she wasn't used to being spoken to that plainly.
"Angry?" she echoed softly.
Michael gave a dry, humorless huff. "Yes. Some of us fight for every hour of breath we get. Every sunrise feels like a victory. And there you were, ready to hand yours back like it was… nothing."
He shrugged but the tension in his jaw told her it was anything but casual.
"It struck me as a terrible waste. A damn shame, really."
Rose stared at him, stunned.
Then, to her own surprise, a small smile tugged at her lips.
"You are… remarkably impolite, Michael."
"You started it," he said calmly. "Called yourself dreadful before I even had a chance."
"Well, I thought you might agree."
"If I agreed," he said, a faint smile of his own appearing, "you'd know."
Rose looked down at her hands, twisting a glove she wasn't even wearing. "I didn't know anyone could be so… blunt."
"That wasn't blunt," Michael said, leaning slightly toward her. "Trust me. If I were blunt, you'd be offended. Deeply."
She gave a soft, startled laugh. "Heavens. Then I suppose I should be grateful you spared me."
"I'm sparing you nothing," he replied with a small smirk. "I'm only choosing my battles."
She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling now, an expression lighter than the one she'd been wearing since he saw her. "I suppose now you'll ask if that penguin from last night is one of the reasons I nearly leapt."
Michael's brow arched. "Penguin?"
Her lips twitched. "Cal."
"Ah," Michael said, grimacing faintly. "That one. Yes. I noticed his wingspan was… suffocating."
Rose snorted. "He is very much one of them."
"Is he your sweetheart?" Michael asked, though his tone made clear he doubted it.
Rose winced so deeply it answered the question for him. "Worse," she sighed, lifting her left hand.
Michael's eyes widened as the sunlight struck the diamond.
"Good Lord," he muttered. "Wear that and you don't need jumping lessons. You'd sink straight to the bottom."
He shook his head. "A mercy, maybe."
Rose burst into a laugh she didn't know she'd been holding in. "You are so annoying."
A passing steward looked over, tipping his cap to Michael, who lifted two fingers in a polite return gesture.
"Five hundred invitations have gone out already," Rose said bleakly. "All of Philadelphia society expects to attend. And the whole time I feel like… like I'm screaming in a crowded room, and no one so much as glances my way."
Michael studied her closely, the humor fading but the warmth not.
"So," he said quietly, "you feel like you're trapped on a train you can't get off. Because you're set to marry a man you don't even want."
She stiffened slightly. "That is—quite a vulgar simplification."
"Is it wrong?"
Rose swallowed. "It's… not that simple."
"It is that simple," Michael replied. "Do you love him?"
Rose shot to her feet, flustered. "You are being terribly rude, sir."
"You didn't answer," he said, looking up at her with calm challenge.
"This is not a suitable conversation."
"Probably not," he agreed. "But it's an honest one."
Rose turned away a little, arms wrapping around herself as if bracing against wind that wasn't there.
"Oh, Michael…" It was the first time she'd said his name like that, soft, uncertain. "Please don't judge me until you've seen my world."
He stood slowly.
"Then I'll learn it," he said. "From you."
Something in her eyes flickered with relief, fear, and something warm he hadn't seen before.
Desperate for a change of subject, she glanced toward the book he'd left on the chair.
"What is this?" she asked, reaching for it.
"A book," Michael said lightly. "Written by a... friend."
"May I?" she asked though her hands were already opening it.
"It seems I don't have a choice," he murmured with a smirk.
Rose settled into the deck chair beside his, flipping the page.Her breath hitched softly.
On the open page lay a stark, elegant sketch — an outcast, wrapped in shadow, half-monster, half-man, beautifully tragic in the way only something misunderstood could be.
"Oh…" she whispered. "He draws them like… people."
Michael sat beside her close, but not touching.
"Because they are," he said gently. "Just not in the way the world likes to believe."
Rose continued flipping through Nathaniel's book, her fingertips brushing the edges of each illustrated page as though they were delicate relics. Her eyes shone with intrigue.
"Is this a journal?" she asked, glancing up at Michael. "Or a diary of sorts?"
Michael exhaled through his nose, a faint huff of amusement. "Something like that. He called it his life's work."
She blinked, impressed. "Is he a novelist, then? Because these entries—" she tapped the open page with the back of her hand "they feel vivid. Almost real."
"Do they not strike you as real?" Michael asked, leaning one elbow on the railing, studying her with a playful tilt of his head.
Rose raised one brow, the corner of her mouth lifting. "Was it meant to be?"
"You don't believe in the supernatural," Michael concluded lightly, watching the way her expression flickered between curiosity and skepticism.
"And you do?" she countered, narrowing her eyes in amusement.
"Perhaps."
Rose raised her brow, lips curving as she flipped another page. "So then," she challenged lightly, "are you planning to teach me what these things are?"
Michael let out a quiet breath through his nose, not quite a laugh, more of a soft acknowledgment of her boldness. His gaze settled on her, warm and steady.
"I could try," he said, voice low and thoughtful. "But truthfully…"
He nodded toward the book in her hands. "I'm still learning new things about all this myself."
Rose tilted her head, interest deepening.
Michael's tone softened, a small, genuine smile edging in. "Perhaps," he added, "we could learn it together."
Rose smirked and flipped to another entry.
But the moment she saw the next sketch, her expression shifted, amusement dissolving into fascination.
"Oh… how interesting."
Michael straightened slightly. "What do you see?"
She turned the book toward him, tapping the illustrated figure on the page. "Is this creature the same one in Mary Shelley's Modern Prometheus?"
Michael's brows drew together, surprised. "The… creature?"
Rose nodded once. "Frankenstein's creation."
He frowned thoughtfully, stepping closer to peer at the drawing.
The sketch showed a tall, gaunt man with elongated limbs, shoulders sloped as though burdened by unspoken weight. His skin appeared pallid, almost ashen, and his eyes were hollowed shadows, deep-set with a perpetual look of confusion mingled with grief. Stitches and irregular markings crossed parts of his arms and neck, not crude like a caricature, but subtle, the kind an artist uses to suggest something reconstructed. His posture was slightly hunched, as though wary of everything around him, poised to retreat rather than attack.
Rose watched Michael's reaction closely.
Underneath the sketch lay Nathaniel's meticulous handwriting:
There was a time in my life when I was utterly enchanted by a novel, "The Modern Prometheus" a tale of a being stitched from death yet cursed with life. A marvelous piece of work, certainly, and to my young mind the perfect portrait of an outcast: feared, abandoned, and yearning for purpose in a world that never wanted it. But I confess, never in my wildest imaginings did I believe the creature was true.
And yet… it was.
I encountered him in the port city of Genoa, on an evening when the fog from the sea clung to the stones like damp shrouds. I had been pursuing rumors of a "pale vagrant" a man who was no man, who wandered the northern coasts with a scholar's eyes and a ghost's footsteps. Locals whispered of a figure too tall for nature, too silent for comfort, too watchful for a beggar. Children claimed he could appear and vanish like mist; sailors swore he stared at the horizon as though waiting for an answer only the sea could give.
I found him near the old breakwater, the moonlight barely strong enough to carve his shape out of the darkness.
He stood near seven feet, if not more gaunt, yet built with an unnatural symmetry, as if sculpted by unsteady but deliberate hands. His skin had a pallor unlike any living man; not the pallor of illness, but of something unfinished. His eyes... were the saddest things I have ever seen: ancient, mournful, intelligent, and utterly alone.
I approached with caution, though not fear. He did not speak. He merely regarded me with wary curiosity, as though trying to decide whether I was real or whether he wished to be.
Communication was fleeting, if one could call it that. He understood words but offered none in return. He recoiled from torchlight. He observed everything my coat, my boots, the waves, even the stars like a child cataloging the world for the first time. And yet beneath that curiosity lay a heaviness, a sorrow so profound it felt like standing beside a man-shaped wound.
I could not stay near him long; he vanished the moment a group of fishermen approached. But in that brief encounter, I realized the truth: the creature was not a monster, nor a myth, nor a mere figment of Mary Shelley's imagination.
He was a soul searching for its purpose still wandering, still learning, still aching to understand why he existed at all.
Michael exhaled slowly.
"I didn't know he wrote… this much."
Rose looked utterly absorbed.
"I didn't know anyone could write like this."
Michael gave a soft, dry laugh. "Neither did I, considering I met the man merely yesterday."
Her brows lifted. "Truly? Only a day?"
"A single day," he confirmed. "And he speaks as if chronicling the history of mankind."
Rose smiled, brushing a loose curl behind her ear. "Seems you've met quite a character."
Michael answered with a wry glance. "I've gathered that much."
She returned her gaze to the creature's sketch, expression softening.
"It's sad," she murmured.
"What is?"
"The way he drew him. He doesn't look monstrous, he looks lost and I suppose," Rose continued gently, "He meant for people to see that."
Michael's tone lowered, quiet but sincere. "He sees more than he should."
Rose turned her eyes toward him.
"And what does he see when he looks at you?"
Michael's lips parted slightly, the question catching him off guard but he managed a controlled, almost teasing reply.
"Hopefully not that creature."
Rose laughed, soft and warm.
"No… not that."
Her smile lingered, and Michael felt, for a fleeting moment, like the sun on deck had shifted entirely toward her.