Fake Fan Fiction ❯ Silver Key ❯ Remembrance of Things Past ( Chapter 3 )

A/N: Here it is! This is the one with the giant info dump of exposition in it. Sorry about that, but there's really no other way to do it without this being novel length and even more confusing. Hopefully, you'll find Michael's chatter at least marginally interesting...

Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed! You guys make me want to be productive on this, which is great.

Also, to Kinneas: Silver Key is a story idea I came up with in 1997. It is my own creation, and I want to make a manga style comic series out of it someday, but it is not yet published (or, truthfully, written ;;^^). The artist is totally fictional, while the author's name bears an, ummm, resemblance to mine. hee.

Warnings for this chapter: BIG angst, descriptions of some icky stuff.

Silver Key

Chapter 3: Remembrance of Things Past

JJ woke surrounded by warm, pleasant smells and soft pillows. He lay still a moment, luxuriating in the slight fuzziness that permeated his consciousness. A gentle tremor lay over him like a blanket, a feeling like 2 a.m. after 6 beers, when the world is soft-focus and everything is funny. He let out a sound that was somewhere between a moan and a sigh as he rubbed his face against the velvety surface of a pillowcase, unwilling to come completely into the land of the living just yet.

"Ah, you're finally up," said a voice behind him.

JJ craned his head backward to see Michael silhouetted in the doorway against the brighter light of what looked like a kitchen. "H-how long was I asleep?"

"Just a couple hours," Michael said reassuringly, walking over to sit on the edge of the bed. "I could have gotten you up as soon as we got back here, but you looked so peaceful that I didn't want to disturb you." He leaned down slightly and touched JJ's cheek with a familiarity that caused a blush to form under the gentle caress. "You're really cute when you sleep, you know that?"

"Ummm...thanks," JJ said, his blush growing more intense.

"You're so nervous," Michael cooed, his voice deep but gentle, its low tones somehow reassuring. "What're you afraid of?"

"Well, ummm...I'm in this weird place, and I don't really understand what's going on, and, ummm...you're a vampire..."

"I know my apartment is sort of messy, but I don't think it's weird, really," Michael said drily, smiling at the almost annoyed expression that came to JJ's eyes. "No, no, I know what you mean." He got up from the bed, smiling down at JJ as broadly as he could while still hiding his fangs. "Are you hungry?"

"Y-yes," JJ said, the suggestion bringing awareness of this condition to his still-sleepy mind. "I'm starving, actually."

"I ordered out for some food while you were sleeping, but I saved some for you,"

Michael said, heading back into the kitchen. "Do you like sweet and sour or wonton soup better?"

"Hmmm...wonton, I guess," JJ replied, a note of surprise evident in his voice.

"Ok, cool," Michael said over the sound of rifling through cabinets and drawers. "Just sit up in bed and I'll bring it out to you, alright?"

"Ok!" JJ called out, pushing himself into a sitting position, placing some of the numerous pillows behind him so that he wasn't sitting directly against the hard wall.

After several minutes of continued drawer-searching, whirring and beeping, Michael emerged from the kitchen carrying a small wooden tray with a bowl of wonton soup, a spoon, some crunchy noodles and two cans of Coke, which he put down in JJ's lap after taking one of the cans of Coke for himself. "I hope you like Coke. It's all I have." He gave a little nervous laugh. " I'm really sort of addicted to the stuff."

JJ picked up the spoon, pausing before dipping it into the soup. "I thought vampires couldn't eat regular food."

Michael pulled a dusty antique looking chair from a corner, placing it next to the bed before sitting down and pulling a straw out of his pocket, which he stuck into the can of Coke as he opened it. "Ah, yeah, that's one of those weird myths about being a vampire. Maybe it's true for those vampires that are like zombies with fangs, but vampires like me are still basically alive, so we can eat whatever we want. Of course, you still have to drink blood, no matter how much Chinese food you eat." He let out a small, low laugh. "Your metabolism gets a great tune up when you change over, though. I can eat like a pig and never exercise and I still look just like I did before..." His eyes became pained, and he looked down for a moment before continuing. "...before the Dying."

JJ regarded him uncomfortably, waiting for him to look up again before speaking. "Do you think...will it upset you too much...to explain what all this is about? Why the world is...so different now?"

Michael blinked at him, momentarily confused by embarrassment. "Oh, man, of course. No problem. You're probably pretty confused, right? I mean, tell me a little about what it's like where you're from, so I can figure out what the most important things to tell you are. Otherwise, we could be here all week, you know? I could just read your mind, of course, but that just seems sort of rude when you can tell me instead." JJ looked pensive for a moment. "Hmmm...well, like I told you before, it's 2003...people just sort of live their lives, I guess. The only vampires I know of are crazy people and goth teenagers who wear fangs to nightclubs. Personally, I live in Queens in this really small apartment with a cat named Noodles. I'm a police detective with the 27th Precinct of the NYPD. There's war, terrorism, famine, disease, stupid people...you know, pretty much situation normal for this planet."

Michael let out an inadvertently high laugh. "Heh, that's a way to put it, alright." He looked pensive for a moment before speaking again. "Well, I would guess that if you went anywhere outside the United States today, it would probably be pretty much what you'd have thought the 'future' would be like if you lived 135 years ago - y'know, pretty much the same with more pollution and cool gadgets. The big changes are just in the United States." A pained look invaded his face as he continued. "Somehow, where you live, it's different, but, here, on New Years Eve, 1999, a group of vampires - I guess they're sort of like vampire terrorists - released this virus they'd been working on over all the New Year's Eve parties in major cities in the U.S." He paused, ordering his thoughts before continuing. "See, since...well, since whenever, thousands of years, there have always been vampires. What makes you a vampire was never any mystical voodoo stuff...it was a virus. No one really knows how it originated, but once there got to be enough vampires around to have a sort of organized consensus on this stuff, they named it Eurydice. After the Greek myth, you know?"

JJ paused, a spoonful of soup halfway to his mouth. "Yeah, I do know that one. She doesn't really come back from the dead, though, does she?"

"Yeah, I know. I wonder about that too. Just proves that we weren't the ones who came up with the name, huh?" He laughed a little. "Anyway, the Eurydice virus is pretty easy to contain. It only lives in blood, and if it's exposed to air it dies pretty quickly. So, basically, the only way to make a new person into a vampire was to do the typical Anne Rice type thing where the vampire gets you nice and weak by drinking most of your blood and then feeds you some of his. The virus is very small, and almost everyone has some tiny cut in their mouth where it can get in. If you wanted to be extra sure, you could rub some vampire blood on the wounds in the victim's neck. But that was how it was...turning someone was a one on one thing and the new vampires were usually chosen for good reasons, like that they were really smart or kind or something like that. There were maybe 5000 vampires in the entire world, and most of them just kept to themselves, making money through investments and stuff, supporting charities and the arts, having fun, all that good stuff."

He sucked on his straw emphatically, scowling. "But, of course, some of them were total bastards who thought living people were scum, and a few of those got together sometime in the mid 1960s and decided they were going to make themselves the dominant species once and for all. So, they turned a lot of scientists with low moral standards and started working on a new strain of Eurydice, one that could be transmitted like a cold or flu and would spread really fast. It took them a long time, but they got it down, and those New Year's Eve parties were the world premiere of their little project."

He shuddered, putting his soda down on the floor next to the leg of the chair. "I was at the big party in Times Square. I was 19, but I had a really good fake ID and I was drinking like a fish, having a grand old time. At around 11 o'clock, maybe, these small planes flew in pretty low over us and dropped all these blue and silver balloons. No one thought much about it...the cops chased them and caught them later for flying so low, but by then the damage was done. By the end of the night, most of the balloons were broken, and everyone had plenty of time to breathe in what was in them." A tear began to form, welling up in the bottom of his eye at the memory. "Now we get to what you read in that book. I came home, drunker than hell, and passed out in bed. In the morning, I got woken up by someone knocking on the door, and it was Essie. Now, Essie had wanted to come to college with me in New York City, but her parents forced her to stay local and go to Tulane. When I left for school, it was pretty much a 'take your shit and get out' situation, so I hadn't seen her in about two years. I was so happy." Tears began to escape down his cheeks as he continued through sobs. "She was my first love, you know. My only friend when we were kids, and then we fell in love when we were teenagers. I pretty much assumed that she was pissed off at me for leaving, cause she never answered my letters, and that I was never going to see her again, and then she came and surprised me. Turns out her dad had been throwing the letters away before she saw them. He was always such a jerk." He blinked and shook his head, snapping himself out of his tangent. "Anyway, the next two days with her were great. But then...I started getting sick." He shuddered, his tears giving away to a look of disgust. "It was really nasty. It starts out like the flu...your joints hurt, you feel dizzy and run a fever, all that stuff. But then...you start to bleed. With most people, it starts with nosebleeds, but then you start crying blood, and coughing up blood and then throwing up blood everywhere. Essie was so good to me, trying to take care of me, but then she started getting sick too. We just huddled together, shivering, too weak to even get up and shower off all the blood, for a few days, and then she sort of fell into a coma, I guess. She was always sort of sickly. I tried to hold on...I thought maybe if I toughed it out, the fever would break and I would be able to get up and get some help for her. I didn't even care if I died, just as long as she was okay. I managed to stay awake for maybe another day and a half before everything just sort of washed out." He laughed bitterly. "The first thing I did when I got up was take a shower. I dragged her in with me...I guess I was in denial, thinking she would wake up soon. I called 911 and there was no answer. I carried her out in the street - I was going to take her to the hospital myself - and saw...a warzone. There were dead people everywhere, people screaming, and vampires everywhere. I was convinced I was dreaming at first but then, slowly, I realized that this was real, that something had happened to the world...and to me." He managed a thin smile. "I'll spare you all that 'I'm an angsty new vampire' stuff, though. I'm sure you've read books. Anyway, the plague went on, just spreading like wildfire, for two weeks, maybe. Millions of people died. I sat with Essie for most of that time, not watching the news, picking rats out of the walls while I watched her eyes get cloudy and her skin start to turn green. By the time that some of the more good hearted vampires had come to the fore and taken control of the situation, there were only about five million living people left in the whole country, and about 10 million vampires. Everyone else was dead. That was the Dying."

He got up and stood next to the bed. "Are you done with the soup?"

"S-sure," JJ said, his voice thin and wavering as Michael picked up the tray from his lap.

"Do you want another Coke?", Michael asked, retreating towards the kitchen with the tray.

"No, thank you," JJ said, managing a polite smile.

"Suit yourself," Michael replied, disappearing into the brightly lit kitchen.

JJ waited a few moments, listening to the cranky banging of dishes being roughly tossed into sink and dishwasher, before carefully getting out of bed and walking into the kitchen himself to find Michael shaking with silent sobs as he rinsed out the soup bowls, bracing his elbows against the counter to keep from falling down, looking so broken-hearted and so young in that moment that JJ felt a tug at his heart, wondering for a moment what it must be like to know a grief that really would never end, instead of one that just seemed that way.

Without thinking for too long, he walked up to Michael and hugged him around the waist, resting his head on Michael's bent back. "You don't have to be ashamed," he said quietly. "What happened to her...what happened to you was awful."

"I had to throw her body down the garbage chute," Michael moaned, almost too quiet to be heard. "There were too many to bury...they had to burn them, and I couldn't let them do that to her...I dressed her up nice and threw her away, and no one cared but me...."

"I care," JJ whispered, feeling tears begin to sting his eyes.

Michael turned away from the sink, causing JJ to lose his grip on him. "Do you? Do you care?" he asked, in a tone that wanted to be sarcastic and angry, but came out pleading and desperate.

JJ looked up in Michael's reddened eyes, seeing the bright spark that resided there even in this moment of grief, and summoned up his most gentle smile. "Of course I care. I know what it's like, a little...I know what it's like to be sad, at least...."

"Sorry about this," Michael whispered, staring back into JJ's eyes. JJ could feel his mind being invaded and read, a feeling not so much unpleasant as disturbing, like insects crawling over his skin.

"You're not lying..." Michael said finally, blinking so that the connection was broken. "Most mortals don't know what real sadness is. Most vampires don't even know. But you...you know what it's like to feel...nothing's happened to you like...what I just told you about...but you feel the things that have happened to you so truly. You love people and trust them." Michael stepped forward, crouching down slightly so that he was face to face with JJ. "Junjoukaren..." he whispered, leaning in close and pressing his lips against JJ's with a feather light touch.

A/N: Hope you enjoyed this, minna! I hope it wasn't too gross. I do err on that side occasionally. Feel free to tell me in the reviews if you think it took it too far :) Next up: the lime! Ooh, citrus! We like that :) And, more exposition! But only a little, hee.