[ He is warm, warmer than her somehow; she had not realized exactly how much until he'd settled his coat around her and the shivers she's fighting to repress suddenly cease, and she closes her eyes until her breathing evens, until the chill that feels as if it has settled into her very bones begins to thaw. ]

Yes, I noticed you do not bear the mark, though I do not know what it means that mine remains this color without any sign of change. [ Gray, firmly, neither dark nor light; she cannot feel it when she brings her hand to her skin but she can somehow sense it there, so indelible it's as if it had always been a part of her body — and she suddenly despises it, hates that she will be made to kneel for it, to scrape and submit. ]

They have. What is required of us, what we are meant to succumb to for this... experiment. [ The realm of science is a mostly foreign one; she had relied on the knowledge of people like the good Doctor Frankenstein to educate her where her own was lacking. She opens her eyes to find his face before her, so collected in contrast to the turmoil of her own feelings. ] I never imagined intimacy being viewed in such a clinical manner.