Chapter Text
It was a young man. His brown eyes were in perfect condition.
He'd apparently put his hands on the nurses' stash of sleeping pills, and ingested enough to end his own life. The poor lad's personal tragedy would allow them to complete the final stage of Lisa's rebirth... or at least, he hoped so.
There was no room for error. Cutting off a tongue had been straightforward enough, but eyes were much trickier, and this time his intervention would probably not go unnoticed. If he failed to get the eyeballs out undamaged, there might never be another chance. Not here, anyway. He and Lisa would have to leave and find another source of supply, and another way to regenerate her, and another dwelling... all sorts of complications that he'd rather do without.
He took his time, and proceeded with caution at every step. It was a long, strenuous process, but eventually he managed to extract the eyes from their sockets and to sever the muscles and nerves they were attached to without nicking them and spilling their contents.
He had no idea how to reattach them to Lisa's orbits. He was no surgeon, and he doubted that even she, with her needle and thread, would have been able to perform such a delicate operation. So he just drew her eyelids apart and gently pushed them inside, unattached to her optical nerves and muscles, and hoped for the best. Electricity would just have to do the rest.
They immediately went to the ECT room, and he gave her what, with any luck, would be the very last shock he would ever inflict on her. When it was done, he approached her, holding his breath.
Her eyelids fluttered open, revealing hazel irises with little touches of green, circled by a dark grey ring. For a moment, they moved around wildly, unfocused. Then they stopped on him, and she smiled, a slow, triumphant, elated smile. With a muffled scream of joy, she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. He lifted her off the table and made her spin, just like he did that night after she'd given him his hand. They danced like children in the room, not caring who might hear them, carried by the music of their own unbridled joy.
They were both whole now.
They could do anything they wanted, become anything they wanted.
They were free, they were alive, they were together.
***
The first thing she wanted to do now that she could see again, was to watch a movie. And not on a tiny TV screen. She wanted the full experience of the big screen in the theatre. She promised him that it was worth it, that he was going to love it, but of course she needn't bother to try and convince him: he certainly wasn't going to refuse her such a simple wish after all this painful wait.
After all, it didn't matter if they were seen anymore: they weren't planning to stay much longer in this town.
“Oooh, look!” she said excitedly, pointing at a poster. “That's totally you!”
He followed her gaze and stared at it, confounded.
“Edward Scissorhands”, said the title.
“The story of an uncommonly gentle man”, read big blue letters at the top.
Under it, the picture showed a couple, and they were uncommon all right. Well, he was. His face was unnaturally pale, riddled with scars. His black hair was a disgusting mess, and his strange, black clothes were covering him to the neck up. But all those intriguing attributes were nothing at all compared to his hands: his fingers appeared to be made of massive, sharp scissors that hesitated to touch the young woman stubbornly embracing him. She was as beautiful as he was off putting. Her white, loose tee-shirt that left her arms bare (and concerningly vulnerable) contrasted with his tight black attire, as did her angelic blonde mane with his horrible black mop of hair. She seemed completely indifferent to the threat of his blades, confident that he would never hurt her.
Neither of them looked happy. He looked sorrowful, almost stern. She looked defiant and determined.
“Innocence is what he knows. Beauty is what she sees.”, said another text below them.
So he was the innocent one, with his weapons ready to slash everything he touched? And she saw beauty in him, instead of the other way around? Well, whoever wrote this knew how to pique the reader's interest, he'd give them that.
He tried not to feel too offended by Lisa's claim that this “gentle man” held any resemblance to him. His hair had never looked as atrocious as that, surely!
“It's directed by Tim Burton!”, she exclaimed, bent over the tiny writings at the very bottom of the poster. “He's the guy who directed Beetlejuice and Batman, those movies are really good! And the actors are great too! Winona Ryder was awesome in Beetlejuice and Heathers. And Johnny Depp is one of the main actors in 21 Jump Street and he's, like, super hot! I mean... yeah, he's a pretty good actor too...”
Well, there was no escaping it, then. This was obviously the movie she wanted to see. At least she thought the actor who supposedly looked like him was handsome.
They bought their tickets and took their seats. It was the early morning show, and apart from them, the cinema was almost empty. Eventually, the lights dimmed. Bright, colorful pictures appeared on the great wall they were facing, accompanied by sounds so loud it made him jump. He thought the movie was starting, but Lisa explained to him that those were just commercials.
“It's like short films, but the only point of them is to sell you something.”
After a while, the lights went off completely, and the actual movie started.
He was immediately stricken by the music. There was something hauntingly poetic about it, that evoked all at once a fairytale, a christmas carol and the mournful laments of a ghost. When he saw the name of the composer, he raised his eyebrows in amazement: “Elfman”. Was that his real name? Surely it must be a pseudonym. In any case, it suited him perfectly.
The movie itself resonated strangely with their own story, he thought. Despite his initial reservations, he quickly had to admit to himself that he deeply related to the character of Edward. How could he not sympathize with this lonely artificial man, struck prematurely by the loss of his only parental figure, left forever incomplete, wandering by himself in his shambling, dark castle for who knew how long before another person found him and, in an act of kindness, brought him out into the world of the living?
He existed out of time. He had the soul of an artist, and his scissors were his means of expression, transfiguring everything he touched into wonderful sculptures. He could never be like everyone else, even if he tried. Nor should he have to be. Yet, his singularity was at the same time what fascinated others and what made them wary of him, to the point of aggression. In the eyes of the narrow-minded neighbours, he was either a freak who existed for their sole entertainment, or an evil menace to get rid of... or a naive puppet to be used unscrupulously. And out of the three, the first could only last so long, until the thrill of novelty faded.
Despite his well intentioned protectors, he would never be able to fit into the outside world and live among others. He was forever doomed to remain an outcast, all alone and frozen in time, in the safety of his ruined castle.
He was so tragic it made him want to cry.
And then, there was Kim...
“What a moron!”, Lisa groaned impatiently next to him.
Startled, he turned to her.
“Why is she so hung up on that douchebag when Johnny Depp is standing right there?!”
In the dark, he couldn't see much of her face, and mercifully she couldn't see his either, or she might have noticed his raised eyebrows and his smug smile. He remembered another girl who, once upon a time, had been “hung up on a douchebag” while he was taking great pains to woo her and please her in bed, but she seemed to have forgotten all about that.
Which was just as well, really.
“So, how did you like the movie?” he asked her when they were out of the theatre.
“It was great”, she answered with a glaring lack of enthusiasm.
“Oh?” he said, waiting for her to elaborate.
“I mean, yeah, it was a great movie, I loved it mostly, it's just... I kinda hated that ending. She should have stayed with him”, she said sulkily.
“Well... she wasn't like him”, he reasoned. “If she'd stayed with him, he would have had to watch her grow old, get sick and die. He would have lost her like he lost his inventor. She wanted to spare him that pain, allow him to preserve his memories of her untainted.”
“Yeah, well, it's lame”, she retorted. “He lost her anyway, because she left him all alone in his drafty, leaky old castle. If she really loved him, she would have come back to him once everyone else was convinced he was dead, and she would have stayed with him. Then they would have had each other, at least for a while. Instead, they had no time together at all. It sucks.”
He looked at her in concern. She was red in the face, truly quite upset. Perhaps she'd taken the parallels between the movie and themselves a bit too much to heart.
“But... she did love him... she was trying to protect him... it was a selfless act...”
He didn't know why he felt the need to defend the actions of a fictional character. Maybe he, too, was seeing a bit too much of themselves in both of the protagonists, and it pained him a little to see Lisa be so hard on one of their less fortunate counterparts. And maybe he understood only too well the instinct to sacrifice your own happiness to protect the one you love, even at the risk of robbing them of their happiness as well.
“That's bullshit!” she yelled, impassioned. “When you truly love somebody, you don't abandon them at the first obstacle! You go all the way for them, to be with them! You... you don't just... She didn't even try...”
Acting on an impulse, he kissed her, interrumpting whatever it was she was trying to say. He thought he got the gist of it anyway.
She did go all the way for him. She risked everything to help him, to make him whole again. She went into the tanning bed to be like him, to be with him. Those were the bravest, most incredible things anyone had ever done for him. Whatever happened to them in the future, those were acts of love that he would never, ever forget. He could only hope to prove worthy of such faith and fidelity.
When he finally broke the kiss, they were both a little breathless. She looked a bit dazed.
“What... what was that for?” she murmured.
“I'm just grateful to have you”, he said, stroking her face.
She leaned into the caress, returning his adoring gaze.
***
He almost felt a pang of regret when they left the attic. This place had been a safe haven for both of them, and it was so full of memories now. But the manor was also attached to a past long gone, a life so far away that it felt like it belonged to someone else, someone long dead (which was technically true). It was time to create new memories, somewhere new.
They didn't take everything. They preferred to travel light, so they left the boombox and most of the books and audiotapes, as well as some of their clothes. It was fine. They would get new ones once they settled in their next place.
Lisa wanted to take one last look at the pink house before they left Brookview for good. They didn't go in. She'd already said all the goodbyes she needed to say, and there was no point disturbing her dad or Taffy by showing up on their doorstep.
When she was ready, they moved away.
They didn't go directly in the direction of New York. She wanted to visit her mother's grave. A truck driver gave them a lift all the way to her former town. The man was nice enough, but he was a bit too chatty and nosy to his taste. When he asked their names, he didn't know what to say, so he gave the first name that came to mind: Edward. Lisa gave him a curious look, but didn't make any comment in front of the driver.
They paid their respects to Lisa's mother, left winter flowers on her grave and removed the weeds that had overgrown all over it. Nobody had tended to it since Lisa and her father had moved to Janet's house.
Lisa talked to her mother for a long time. She told her how much she missed her, she told her how sorry she was that she couldn't visit her sooner. She told her that she met someone. A boy so gentle, so kind, so caring. She didn't know what she'd ever done in her life to deserve someone like him. She wished they could have met; she knew they would have loved each other.
“You don't need to worry about me, Mom. I'm okay. I'm more than okay, actually. I'm happier now than I've been in... forever. We're moving to New York City, so it might be a while until I come back to see you, but I will, I promise. I... I don't know if you can actually hear me... I don't know if you're in here, but if you are... Just hang on tight, okay? Wait for me. I'll come back for you. I'll talk to you again as soon as I can. I love you.”
***
“So... Edward, huh? Is that how I should call you from now on?” she said teasingly.
They were sitting side by side in the bus that would take them directly to the New York City Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan.
He shrugged.
“I suppose it's as good a name as any? I'm going to need one eventually, if I'm to become a new musical sensation”, he tried to joke.
Truth was, he still hadn't found a name that truly felt right for him, but he had all the time in the world to find it, didn't he? In the meantime, Edward would do just fine.
She smiled at him, this little, shrewd smile she had sometimes.
“Well, if we're going to have new lives, I guess I should pick a new name too. Do you think I look like an Elsa?”
He blinked at her.
“I don't know... I suppose so? Why Elsa?”
“Like Elsa Lanchester. The actress who plays the bride and Mary Shelley in Bride of Frankenstein? First I thought about Shelley, but it's a bit on the nose, you know? Plus it's my aunt's name, it would be weird to call myself like her. And Mary... Meh! So common. Nobody would think it's in reference to someone cool.”
He blinked again. She'd really given the matter a lot of thought, hadn't she?
“Okay. Now what about our surname?” she went on enthusiastically. “I think it should end in “ein”, like your gravestone, you know? Or does that feel icky for you?”
He shook his head, at a loss. She was way ahead of him. She misunderstood his bafflement for approval, and carried on:
“Okay, so, how about Stein? Edward and Elsa Stein. It has a nice ring to it, right?”
When they arrived at their destination, neither of them had the first idea what to do. They'd used all that was left of their money to buy their bus tickets. But they weren't worried: the undead had no need for sleep or for food, after all. They would find a place eventually, a home that they would populate with music and movie posters and books of poetry, and a lot of candy. And possibly a pianoforte.
In the meantime, they would be just fine.
They had each other, and that was all they needed.