WHO: Major Lilywhite, Liv Moore WHEN: Last night WHERE: Their housing unit WHAT: They both wake up with new memories, and someone is a little hungry. WARNINGS: ZOMBIEISM. Which, you know, brain eating. Spoilers for the iZombie finale.
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I’m not crazy, I’m just a little unwell…
Dreams had a funny way of making sense in the moment even when they shouldn’t have otherwise. Things that shouldn’t have been possible were. But the places Liv’s subconscious took her - Drake’s lifeless body on the ground in front of her, Clive urging her to let the brain take over, Major shooting Rita in the head - were real enough, inspired just enough by her fear of not being able to save the people she loved, of giving into the monster inside of her, of getting Major too wrapped up in a world he shouldn’t have belonged to.
The carnage by the stage where Rob Thomas had performed earlier was something right out of a movie, though, complete with a man playing a guitar and a woman covered in blood and eating right there, like it was no big deal. Like it was normal.
”Are you ready for the new world order, Olivia Moore?”
Liv sat up in bed, her eyes wide and red and bloodshot. Her chest heaved; if she had more of a heart rate, it would have been pounding in her chest.
It took a few moments to take note of her surroundings and gather herself again. She shook her head, shaking the zombie away and replacing it with the Liv that everyone knew. Her eyes darted towards the divide in the room, listening for the sound of Kaylee’s breath. Still asleep. Good. Silently, she slipped out of bed and out of the room, heading for the bathroom.
The bright light emphasized how pale she was. Liv stared at herself in the mirror before leaning down to splash water on her face. If she hadn’t gone through this once before, she might have thought she was having weird visions from the last brain she’d eaten, but these images were too specific to have come from anyone but her. “Not again,” she groaned, leaning heavily against the cold sink. “My life’s bad enough.”
Major caught the last of Liv's conversation to herself as he closed the door to his and Ravi's bedroom. Everything caught up to him so fast: Max Rager, Vaughn Du Clark, the party, reverting to zombie, getting caught by Ravi as the Chaos "Killer," and finally, all that time spent in jail, almost going full on zombie mode from lack of brains. He'd had no idea that Liv had been seeing anyone else, let alone a zombie guy named Drake Liv would have to kill because he'd been forced to become — well, the thing they all dreaded. A Dawn of the Dead style zombie.
Crossing the room, he was silent as he could be, until he leaned in the doorway and rapped his knuckles against the frame of the door. Liv hadn't closed the door completely. He was so hungry. It was hard not to just jump straight to asking for something to eat, but he figured the white streak in his hair could give it away as soon as Liv turned to look at him.
Sharing a room with people she knew and trusted meant there were only a few options for who would be knocking. Liv thought about how at home, she would have been anxious already, wondering who was there and not trusting who it might be. Here - funnily enough, considering what this place was and how many super powerful people were here - it wasn't like that.
Liv pulled the door open, recognizing the shirt before her eyes made it up to Major’s face and --
“Oh, Major.” Almost instantly, she wanted to cry. She knew what that streak meant. She'd done that. She remembered that - and so much more. This had all gotten much worse than she’d imagined. He hadn't wanted the life she had.
Gently, she reached up to cup his cheek for a moment before wrapping her arms around his neck. “I'm sorry.”
"Hey, no." Major had adjusted where he was when Liv originally turned him. He'd seen that most zombies weren't bad people, but just those trying to get through their day with this horrible thing. The fact that they saw the visions from the people they ate… Major was beginning to understand how hard it had been for Liv.
Ravi's cocktail of Positivity Brain had been helpful, and then there was the bit where it was actually helpful in the Max Rager incident. He and Liv had been on mercenary brain together so they could make sure to get Ravi through the horde of zombies that came rampaging out of that stupid ass party. "I'm okay, Liv."
Well, that wasn't completely true. He was learning to cope and having people that knew and he could lean on — especially the people he was closest to — really helped. Liv had gone through all of this and he'd seen how being a zombie had harmed and helped her in a lot of different ways. Yes, the brain thing was gross and unpleasant, the weird one heartbeat per minute was a peculiar feeling, and hot sauce was in short supply here. Also the hair dye thing. That was going to be awesome. He wasn't ready for white hair. It worked for Liv, but he'd just look old.
"Okay, so not okay." He had his arms around her. He always enjoyed that his long arms enveloped her. "I'm starving. Been awhile since I had mercenary brain. And there was a lot of adrenaline going there."
Liv and Major in Seattle had been through this already: they'd gotten past Liv’s choice (which she knew she'd do again, selfish as it was) and gotten back to the friendship they'd had before. Liv and Major in Mount Weather hadn't been through it all, though. It was one thing to hear about it; it was another to live through it. Liv knew from experience how difficult and dark that path could be, but Major didn't have to be alone like she had been. They could get through anything as long as they were together, weird memories included.
She looked up at him, unwilling to step away just yet. Major had always felt safe to her. He felt like home.
“You've come to the right place,” she answered, “because I happen to be an expert on this sort of thing, and I happen to have an excellent assortment of options.” They'd worry about how long it would all last later. Right now, her focus was on him. “We made a good team, you know. On that mercenary brain. You were amazing.”
"You missed my pièce de résistance. Heeeeeeeeere's Majoooor!" If he hadn't been in the middle of trying to axe the hell out of that elevator door, he probably would have laughed his ass off at his own joke. The joke, however, came with the remembrance that he'd just let zombies kill a man, even if it was the man who caused the zombies in the first place.
It was only a brief instant that he'd covered up by squeezing Liv against his chest. "Let's go get something to eat. Lab or Kitchen?"
Major had always been a goofball. Liv was relieved that hadn't changed. There had to be light somewhere in their lives, or they'd never make it through everything they had faced.
“Lab first,” she stated, letting go of Major so she could take his hand and lead him away from the bathroom. “Then we’ll whip something up in the kitchen.” As weird as it was to talk about eating a brain, Liv was extremely grateful to have someone she could talk to about it, someone who understood from experience. She knew that was one reason why she'd been drawn to Lowell and Drake: shared life experience. She didn't have to hide that. They could share it together. And now she had that in Major.
“What do you remember?” Liv asked. Mount Weather was fairly quiet at this time of night, which afforded them privacy they wouldn't have otherwise. “I'd gone downstairs... that woman who'd saved us, Vivian, she was there with a security team.” Liv wrinkled her nose. “I think they were eating Rob Thomas.”
"Sounds like we're on the same page. I was asking about Natalie, one of the people I actually talked to about Ravi's cure before I..." Put her in cold storage. But he failed her, because all of those zombies got taken by Max Rager and some of them were no longer around to go back to their families. He'd been surrounded by people he'd drugged and tossed in a freezer without a single word of why, and some of them were putting two and two together. That was going to take some time to process.
He was hesitant to tell Liv how she'd made him realize some things about his relationship with Liv. He'd come home from that experience to Liv wanting to break up with him because they were too different (physically), just as he was coming around to understanding just how hard it was for her. Really understanding it. "I remember her team coming in. Kick ass and take names guys, right?"
Liv squeezed Major’s hand. He had such a big heart, and wanted to help people so much. They were similar that way, and always had been. Not being able to help people weighed heavily on Liv’s mind at first. It was hard to lose that part of herself, and to feel like she’d failed. She just hoped Major didn't take it too hard. He’d been trying to help. It wasn't his fault Vaughn was an enormous jackass.
“Yeah, them.” There was something she didn't like about them. There was something ominous. Wasn't it convenient that she purchased Max Rager just in time for an enormous outbreak? “There's something not right about it, Major. I have a really bad feeling about them.” Had they traded one bad guy for another? “At least Clive’s in on it, now.”
Yeah. Clive.
How the hell was Clive going to explain any of that to the SPD? For that matter, he'd thrown out the cases against Major that he rightfully had against him. Everything was just messed up, and to top it off, Major's stomach lurched as he realized he needed less thinking and more eating.
"Han Solo would be so proud. Bad feeling about them." And he probably would have, which was weird for Major to think about. Double sets of memories clouded his judgment. "No use in really thinking about it. We're not there, so there's nothing we can do. On the other hand…. We are there, and there's nothing we from here can do for us there. We're a tautology."
“Well now I can die happy. Really die, I mean. Han Solo, proud? That's it, I can't do better than that.”
Joking was easier than trying to sort out what she was thinking, and Major was right (as usual): there was nothing they could do about their lives in Seattle. Liv hated feeling helpless and out of control, but there was nothing she could do from where she was. She had to get used to that. “I don't feel superfluous,” Liv countered, frowning a little. “This?” She lifted their hands, fingers entwined. “Feels real. Just as real as anything else. We’re here. Whatever is going on there…” With other people, she thought, “we’re here. And I… I'm glad we have each other. I don't know what I'd do without you, Major. I mean that. Here or there. I don't know what I'd do.”
He could think of a few things she'd do — move on, not feel bad about who she was now. He'd been a real idiot, thinking he knew better than she did about her condition. How could he understand when he hadn't experienced it? He wasn't sorry for protecting her from Vaughn Du Clark. She would have gone straight for the jugular if she'd known sooner than she had what he was doing in his spare time, what Max Rager was paying him for. He knew it, and he was sure she did too. Liv rarely had any sort of delusions about who she was, even when she was on a brain.
Major leaned down to give her a kiss against her temple as they walked toward the laboratory. Ravi was going to have fun with all of this in the morning. Best to let him sleep a little longer. "You'd do what you always do, Liv. You'd be the baddest bad ass zombie this side of the apocalypse."
Liv scoffed, but she did it with a smile. If she had enough blood flow, she would have blushed. “Damn right I’m bad ass.” She didn’t feel that way most of the time, so she appreciated Major feeding her ego a little bit. She remembered feeling that way in Seattle, though. The work she did to get justice for murder victims made her feel powerful and tough, and it put meaning back into her life when she’d felt lost. Playfully, she nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. “I have competition for baddest bad ass zombie now, though.”
She was quiet while they walked the rest of the way, waffling between enjoying his company and trying to sort out all of her thoughts. On one side there was her year in Mount Weather, her friends here, finding her way back to Major like they were magnets, drawn to each other. On the other, everything else. It was hard to know how that would affect them here. She didn’t want it to. How she felt about Major hadn’t changed.
Once they reached the lab (people were weird about keeping human brains in the kitchen beside all the food everyone else ate, so she kept it in a freezer with Ravi’s stuff instead), she released his hand to look at the options. “Okay, so we have…” Liv squinted. “We’ll save kung-fu brain for when we really need it. Racist brain probably not something you want, same with sniper brain. That one comes along with PTSD. Gamer brain? No, that’d probably be annoying here, since you can’t play anything… Stoner? Frat bro? Trophy wife?” Now that Liv remembered more, she recognized the names and who they were. “Passionate artist? Erotica writer?” She looked back at Major, waggling her eyes at him. “Or there’s dragon brain. I have some of that left too.”
It was still weird to think about, sorting through human brains like they were nothing. At least, Major thought to himself, these people were killed by other people. They were not done by his own hand, and they weren't going to be using these brains when all was said and done. Better than how Blaine got his brains (and wasn't it just the funniest that Blaine had no idea who he was anymore).
Some of these sounded like the stuff of nightmares. Trophy wife? Frat bro? All Major could think about was the temporary roommate he'd had following Liv's departure. The one who kept thinking he was frontin' and calling him hey yo trip. That sounded like a one-way ticket to annoyance if you asked him. Artist and writer? Not bad ideas, but not so soon after these memories. "Oo la la. Maybe another day on those."
Major rubbed the back of his neck, sorting through them all and shrugging. "Think I might wanna see what it's like to be Smaug for a few days."
Liv figured he’d like that idea. The other ones, funny as they might be, also came with a lot of baggage. The dragon? Sure, but how often was he going to get that chance? Best to ease him into the change of diet, anyway. Major might have been getting used to it in Seattle, but Liv knew there was an adjustment period.
“You got it. One Smaug snack, coming right up.” It was easier to be humorous about it than letting herself think about the reality of her (their) situation. “I think I even have some hot sauce left over. It’s all yours.”
Major's eyebrow rose. "All mine, huh? Someone's feeling a little guilty." He reached out an arm to rub her shoulder. "You know you don't have to feel guilty. About any of this. I could have taken the cure Blaine did, but it meant forgetting everyone I ever cared about. You. Ravi. Peyton. Minor. So don't, okay? Don't do the suffering in silence guilt thing."
Liv hesitated, holding her breath. She did feel guilty. They’d worked through his feelings about being turned in the first place, but above all else, Liv had always wanted to protect him. Just like he’d been trying to protect her from Vaughn. She never imagined he’d get so wrapped up in that world.
But there was nothing she could do to change that. Liv had already done the suffering in silence thing once; she didn’t want to go down that path again. So she turned to look at Major again, a container in her hands and a smile on her face. Looking at him, she remembered that there were still things to be grateful for. He hadn’t taken the cure. They’d survived the Max Rager party. They’d rescued a lot of zombies from the clutches of Vaughn Du Clark. Major was here. “Just trying to be generous. You deserve it. Now come on, let’s get you something to eat.”