The Universe's Mixer

Running into a version of the girl he'd brutally killed had given him a strange new insight into life. The fact that she now knew that he'd done it, and had for some reason spared him - he could only guess that his words about Evey had been the saving grace - had sent him into a spiral of thought.

It didn't escape Aidan that there were people in the world, not just this one, but others as well, who believed in him and wanted the best for him. It never had, not really. Back home he'd had Josh and Sally, who had done everything they could to make sure that he was able to be the guy he wanted to be. Then he'd been in a world where there had been Dean, Evey, and Peter. Here he had even more.

Aidan could never take that for granted.

He realized that he kind of had been. The way he was acting, the way he'd been treating Evey. Even the way he'd been treating himself. He'd made a monumental mistake, and he'd felt terribly about it, but then he'd acted like a child. Peter was supplying him with blood so that he didn't have to take from living people or take from the hospital. And still he was keeping himself away from people.

He thought about all of this and more as he walked toward work.

She'd gone out at night, eager to find her friend Eric. Though she could have made the journey across the water to the edge of the City, to that wall that overlooked the eerie forest beyond, she chose instead to try to find him in the City proper. A wall... Always, they met on a wall, and as she walked the nighttime streets, a wall was what she was looking for.

After some wandering, she found herself in a rougher part of town. It didn't concern her; she knew well enough that she could tend to herself, and Peter was only a panic spike away besides. Peter, she thought, was the perfect guardian. The perfect everything. Not quite her everything, but if it hadn't been for her duty to the people of Earth, he could have been.

At last, she found a suitable wall. It was broken down and rough, but perfect for scaling for all its imperfection. She easily scrambled up the side, her hands and nimble feet using the crumbling mortar and bricks to ease her passage up. And then she perched and waited, feet swinging easily against the side. Eric would come soon. She knew it in the center of herself. He always found a way to her.

She hadn't expected anyone else in the darkness.

Before the polished wooden door, Evey repetitively clenched her strong, thin fingers in uncharacteristic hesitation. It wasn't fear; she'd stood in front of his monster prepared to do what must be done regardless of personal cost. On more than one occasion now, she'd done that. It wasn't fear, or at least, it wasn't fear for her life. In her mind's eye, she saw him kneeling on the floor by his kitchen sink, still the noble man she knew, fighting against the demon inside him. On that day, she couldn't comfort him as she'd wanted. Now...

Now, she didn't know what she was supposed to do or who she was supposed to be with him. Lover. Ex-lover. Mourner. Judge. Defender. What was she to him now that she was both more and less than she'd been before?

Her jaw turned diamond-hard. It didn't matter. She wasn't here for her own answers. She was here out of an innate sense of duty. He deserved to know what had happened to his lover. What had happened to her. She knew that whatever confusion she felt, it would be worse for him. And it was weak of her to be standing here on his threshold hesitating like a teenager afraid of rejection. Rejection didn't factor into this. She'd deal with whatever he threw her way. Because he deserved that much. Because he would suffer more than she would.

As her resolve slipped into place, she raised her fist and knocked three times, sharply. Enough of this, now. Her frame squared itself solidly in front of Aidan's door. She lifted her chin. She was ready. She told herself she was ready.

Talking with the cop had done some good, Aidan thought. It was nice knowing there were people out there that could help. Or ... well, thought they could help anyway. Officer Crews had been under the impression that he was speaking with a junkie, and had imagined that he knew what to do to help said junkie. While Aidan knew he was technically going through withdrawals exactly like a traditional addict, his were a bit more dangerous, and the source of his needs were more damaging to the outside world. When he imbibed, everyone he encountered was then in incredible danger of not being alive anymore. Even to get his particular drug meant the death of another.

He was doing moderately okay on the blood bags, but was still consuming more a day than he would like. Really, anything more than two or three wasn't okay. He liked it much better when he was down to one. One a day, two if he was going to be doing something that might inspire lust or... anything along those lines.

Aidan hadn't sought out Evey again, not wanting to see her smiling face in the midst of his anguish. He was sure she was probably pissed off at him for it. Hurt. And the other Evey? The one who had seen him at his worst? Who had helped him through? Shame kept him from her.

His skin itched to leave the house and hunt down a source of live blood. His brain swam with everything he'd been going through. To make it worse, Aidan couldn't even relax into a book. He devoured them as if they were his true weakness, and everything in them stuck like glue. He'd never been dumb, of course, but he'd also never sped through a novel in under two hours.

The couch, his go-to haven, seemed to have begun to be molded in one spot to his butt. Aidan shifted, trying to find that sweet spot. He'd need a new couch in not too long.

Aidan was in bad shape. On edge. Fighting urges. Bagged blood was barely keeping the edge off. He hadn't been doing so hot since Evey left him sitting on the kitchen floor. Though, admittedly, he was doing a hell of a lot better than he would have been if she'd not destroyed all of Leeloo's blood.

How many more days would he have sustained that hard drunk if he'd been left with it? If she hadn't been so insistent about finding it and getting rid of it?

He knew that he had to tell his Evey about what had happened. What he'd done. But he didn't want to see her until he was able to shake off the rest of this problem. Or at the very least, most of it. She could know the horror, she couldn't see it. He would die before she did.

In a way she already had, and he hated himself for it.

Things were always more difficult after live blood, this time though, things were damned near impossible. There had been so much. It didn't help matters that it had been from who it had been from, either. Pure life. Supreme being. Divine. Actually fucking divine. He could taste it, still. Feel it rolling over his tongue, sliding down his throat. Filling him with the sensation of invulnerability.

Residual problems had come with it, too. Aidan was absorbing information - learning things - at a rate that he'd never been able to before. His head hurt with the sheer force of knowledge cramming itself into his skull. It didn't help anything.

He needed air. He needed to get out of his apartment and go somewhere that wasn't the hospital. He had to try to go a few hours without touching any blood at all. So far he'd only managed about an hour and a half before the pain got too severe and his frenzy bubbled to the surface again. Weening himself off was going to take a long time, this time.

For once, Aidan was glad that Dean wasn't here. To see this.

Staying far from people, Aidan made his way to the docks. If he slipped, at least the people there weren't good people, mostly. Seedier types. Nobody would miss them. If he slipped.

He really really didn't want to slip.

Aidan found a nice-ish spot to sit, the bench was weathered by the salt water, grey instead of brown. But the wood was stable.

It had been weeks since she first saw Aidan Waite on the streets of the City - and days since she'd spoken to John about it. His response had settled all throughout her until she was saturated with it. She lost sleep over it - over all of it, the implications, the probability of its truth - all of it. And, in the end, she came to conclusions.

She needed to see Aidan. There were things left unsaid.

There was entirely too much time spent on preparation. She scrubbed her skin - every part of it - until it was glowing, then carefully brush-dried her hair straight and smooth. She had long ago given up cosmetics. They'd been difficult enough to find in London, and they had been all but impossible on that dying planet, and then truly impossible on the island. Now that she had full access to it here in the City, she found that she didn't want it.

But she dressed very carefully. The soft black pants were slim, but on her frame seemed fluid and graceful instead of stern. The sleeveless blouse was satin under a navy blue bit of flotsam, too sheer and delicate for any sort of work. Perhaps that's why she'd selected it. The clothing made her feel... less like a worker. More like... something else. Maybe something beautiful, or at least, something that could have been beautiful once. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, then turned away, pushing her hair over her shoulder as she bent down to slip on a pair of low heels. It was time to go.

The grand hotel she remembered was easy enough to find. The doorman took one look at her, then opened the door immediately. She walked through the lobby as if she belonged, and with the way she was dressed, she felt like she might. There was a sharp-eyed attendant at the desk who gave her a long scrutiny, but she returned his stare with a cold, hard look of her own, and he turned away with a touch of an index finger to his nose.

She took the elevator up. She knew exactly where to go. The thick carpeting muted her heels as she walked. Three times, she rapped her knuckles against the door she knew, after some research, was Aidan Waite's.

The aftermath of the incineration of Leeloo had been short. Aidan had managed to get himself home, despite the swimming of his head and depth of his drunk. He had chattered with Bishop over philosophical nonsense and how much better it was to be free of restrictions and conscience-ridden rules. Once home, he had stashed the precious backpack and had the wherewithal to get into the shower. But by the time that was over, he'd reached the point of intoxication that too much drinking will reward any person with. He stumbled from the bathroom to his bed and fell upon it face down.

Aidan passed out hard and slept soundly.

It was almost two days before his eyes fluttered open. His head was filled with cotton, his eyes heavy. It was hunger that woke him, he was sure that if he fed himself he would be able to sleep for another two days. He felt ill at ease and almost hung over. There were only flashes of memory in which he drank an entire backpack filled with bloodbags. There was more, he was sure of it. Scratching at his brain from a hidden doorway, urging him to recall it was there.

The hunger was deep, unlike the normal need to drink blood that he got, even if he'd let a few days pass. He chalked it up to how much he'd had and that his body wanted to feed like that all the time. Which was a thing he was definitely not going to let happen.

There was no blood in the fridge when he looked, and Aidan sighed. Of course he wouldn't have any. He'd devoured his two remaining bags before he'd gone to the hospital to begin his binge. His mind wandered to the backpack. Maybe there was one forgotten bag in there, something hidden in a side pocket.

That thought twisted in his belly uncomfortably. As he walked around the apartment trying to find where he'd put it, flashes of the night before started to roll around in his mind. A mugger. He recalled a mugger. The backpack was not in his bedroom or the closet in there like it should be. Drinking the mugger wasn't so bad on its own, since it was a criminal, but the live blood... The backpack wasn't in the livingroom, either. A homeless woman. He'd eaten a homeless woman. Aidan's mouth twisted in distaste and his brows knit in disappointment in himself. An innocent woman. The backpack was not in the hall closet. Two more faces flashed before his eyes, but memory here was hazy, though it did make the vampire worried. The backpack was not in the pantry or the fridge or the freezer, nor anywhere else in the kitchen. Aidan's memories began to walk him through the streets to a strip club.

Focused more now on the events of the night than the bag, his muscles moved him through the apartment to the second bathroom. His legs turned him toward the wall behind the door and his arms reached to open the linen closet there. He had gone into the strip club and sat down, at home in the darkness and wanting to hide, thinking that with the hour there wouldn't be many patrons inside, and he'd been right. His torso leaned into the depth of the awkwardly placed cupboard. His hand grasped at the backpack, which was shoved as far back as possible, so far that he had to pull with fingers to urge the canvas forward so he could get a better grip. The girl at the strip club, the first one who had come up, she'd been offering him a dance. She looked at him... she'd looked at him and screamed.

The backpack was much heavier than it should have been, Aidan noted. It should have been empty, or at least mostly empty. Instead, he was greeted with a solid weight that made him frown. Focused again on the bag and not the memories, disturbing as they were, Aidan pulled the backpack fully from the linen closet and set it on the counter. He opened it up and gazed at what was inside.

Blood.

He remembered killing that girl, tearing open her throat while she screamed, the sound of it gurgling in her mouth.

So much blood.

He remembered laughing as he hunted the next one down.

He remembered twisting along the poles on the stage as he taunted dancers.

He remembered the fatally brave bouncer who thought that a baseball bat would solve all the world's current problems.

He remembered the scene of slaughter he had reveled in while he stalked the last one.

Aidan's hand reached into the backpack and pulled out a blood bag. Not quite halfway full. A second that was shy of 3/4ths full. The rest of them were plump. Maybe a little bit too full. He counted twelve very full bags.

He remembered the orange hair.

Everything hit Aidan all at once, and he doubled over in agony. There was nothing physical harming him, the psychological impact of what he had done tore through him as swiftly as he had torn through the flesh of those innocent people. He had killed. Not just one or two. Not just the people in the strip club, though that would have been more than enough for Aidan Waite to hate himself.

He had killed Leeloo.

In an act so evil that he could not think of anything worse that he could have possibly done, or had done at any point in his long life, Aidan had killed somebody who was loved by one of his friends, somebody who embodied purity and love. He had devoured her and coaxed her into thinking that she was safe and everything was going to be alright. He had hoarded her blood in fourteen bags, two that were recently fresh when she was taking her last breaths and twelve he had used to leach her life from her drip by drip.

Aidan's knees gave out. He didn't even realized that he'd crumpled onto the bathroom floor. He was devastated by what he had done. This was a betrayal of the sort he didn't think he would ever be capable of. In the depths of his life with Bishop, when other vampires feared him because he was so good at killing, he had never been this heartless, this evil. This cruel.

He wished then that Dean had killed him. Or that the world had swallowed him. He wished that Evey had left him in the ruins, he wished that the curse the witch had placed on him was still in tact. For the first time since he was newly turned, Aidan wished for death.

His hand squeezed the bag of blood, intent on bursting it, or throwing it. The seal gave and introduced the aroma of Leeloo into the bathroom. All the cells in Aidan's body awoke. He remembered why he'd done what he'd done.

Eyes blackened and fangs exposed, Aidan drank. When he was done, he ripped the bag open to clean the inside of it with his tongue. Somehow, he had the fortitude to stand again, and the willpower to not dig into the backpack for more, but instead hide it again, deep in the tallest part of the linen closet, so high up that he had to climb on the other shelves to get there. Nobody would be able to see it on accident, find it while looking for something else.

Aidan giggled.

"My monster." Bishop said gleefully as he appeared at the doorway. "If I'd only known that all it took to make you forget all friendships was a little divine blood, I would have searched for it a long time ago."

Peter couldn't know, Aidan knew. The feelings he wouldn't be able to hide. The guilt and sorrow, the rage. Even most of the killing was far too vivid. But he could hide one. He could hide Leeloo. Lock her down and throw away the key. Replace her face with that of somebody else. Exchange that part of his memory. He needed to practice. Aidan found all the magazines in his apartment and looked through them, constructing an amalgam of a girl to take Leeloo's place in that memory, he walked himself through it over and over again. He felt like his mind was working faster than it had ever in his life, taking in information and sorting through it, assimilating what he was attempting to teach himself at a rate unheard of previously. It should have been agonizingly complicated. It wasn't.

"Fucking devious." Bishop chimed. He was leaning over Aidan while he worked through the pages. "Brown hair and blue eyes, common and innocuous. But why did you go to such great lengths?"

"She was special somehow, I don't know how."

"Actually, your lack of detail there can only help."

Aidan ignored Bishop the rest of the night, despite the fact that his Father said many more things to him. He didn't stop until he could run through the scenario without using the magazines and without prompting himself. He knew that if Peter really wanted, he could dig. Dig deep deep deep and see the truth. He could only hope that this surface memory would be satisfactory should Peter look in. His friend would surely feel the guilt, sorrow, and agony. Most of it could probably be explained by what he'd felt when finding the other Evey, but if it lasted too long... if there was any suspicion, this needed to be the explanation Peter found.

Playing out the false scenario again was how Aidan fell asleep on he couch.

(Violence warning)

His drunk was a hefty several days deep. Like the phantom of Bishop had predicted, it was not a far fall from drinking bagged blood to the live stuff flowing directly out of breathing people. Once he hit a certain point in his slowing mental clarity, he began to lack a conscience as well.

It had started as a controlled descent. The first human Aidan had taken had been a mugger in a dark alleyway. That had been good, though he'd frightened the man who had been the victim into fainting. Not caring if he'd been seen or not, Aidan finished drinking the mugger and left. From there he'd gone to a homeless woman, which would destroy him with guilt as soon as he was sober again, and had only gotten worse. The unleashed vampire moved through the City occasionally taking victims of his own, people that were minding their own business. Including the mugger and transient, there were four before he got to the strip club and stumbled his way inside.

Being late in the afternoon, there weren't many patrons about, and there weren't that many on staff, either. They all mostly ignored the newcomer, dim lighting and a ducked head hiding the smear of blood across pale flesh. He sat in a chair close to the stage and lost all anonymity. Aidan became a target for the roving dancers and the blacklight lit up what he'd been trying to hide.

He was greeted with a smile, followed by wide fearful eyes. It was all the signal the predator needed to strike. Fangs found beautifully exposed flesh quite easily, and then more, Aidan ripped through the club quickly, tearing open throats and feasting on the lives he was ruining. There wasn't much care given to what he was doing, he wasn't gentle, he was wasteful. Pools of red spread across outdated, dingy carpeting as Aidan hunted them one by one.

Like a cat, he played with them. Letting them run, reveling in the scent of their fear. He was Darkness, he was Death, he was once more the creature that humans and vampires alike feared. The boogeyman. The tale that adults tell their children to make them behave.

Aidan laughed and taunted, he sang old songs and whispered meaningless sweet nothings into the ears of his prey right before he bit into them. He was having a grand old time. The crying, the terror, delicious all of it.

He could hear the last one whimpering in a corner, behind a door. Thinking that she was safe. Already bleeding, she was simple to track down. But he played with her still. Standing on the other side of the door as if he didn't know she was back there, then turning and starting to walk away heavily to give her the illusion of safety. Just as he heard her sigh of relief, Aidan whipped the door closed and grinned down at her.

She screamed.

Since the meeting with the other Evey and his talk with Peter after, Aidan had been unable to face his own Evey, despite how much he wanted to see her. He felt that if he looked in those bright eyes, all he would see was the pain reflected from the other. He worried that by touching the soft, healthy skin of one, he would know the rough sun-beaten skin of her opposite.

For days he couldn't even bring himself to leave his apartment. He had ignored his phone, he had not answered his door. Silently, he had sat watching the sun rise and fall, unmoving from his place on the plush leather couch the City had provided him. Thinking on the sorrow he had seen, the broken shell that Evey had become.

Peter had said that he would keep an eye on the other, give reports on her well being. But Aidan knew exactly what he would find, nothing. If she had been surviving before, he had taken away the last bit of her will through his ignorant and careless actions. By appearing before her in the way that he had, proclaiming his love for her, kissing her, he had sapped from her the last shred of humanness. She had seen that he loved not her, but the other. The one that had not lived on an island of dinosaurs. The one that had not lost him and lived without him for years. She had seen that, and she had been broken where before there had only been a crack.

When Aidan did finally leave the apartment, he had gone to the hospital and begun to drink. He hadn't even waited to leave the storage room before ripping open the first bag. There were three in the trash before he had finished gathering others into a backpack.

It took lots more blood to get drunk when it was bagged than if he just drank from a person. His backpack was full, and as soon as Aidan was out the door, he pulled out another, walking the streets and devouring, dropping the empties into streetside bins as he went. He was past caring if he got caught, but somehow he knew that he wouldn't be. This wasn't the dying world where blood was scarce. Nobody cared about what was in trash cans here, nobody was digging through them seeking out scraps of food or clothing or anything that could help them in their lives. Nobody would see the shriveled, empty plastic bags that had been punctured.

He knew the danger of what he was doing, he knew the risks to the people around him. He was aware that once he was in the state he was setting out to achieve, he was likely going to kill somebody. But he also didn't care. He needed to escape. He needed to be away from thoughts and feelings.

Half the backpack was empty now and he was unsure of where to go when Bishop appeared walking beside him.

"This is a strange way to reenter the world of being a real vampire, Aidan." The hallucination said to him. "But I'm not going to argue. I'm just glad you're headed down the right path again. You know this is going to lead to live blood, and you're doing it anyway."

"Why can't you just leave me alone?" Aidan spoke to the nothing that was beside him.

"Oh come on. You aren't that stupid. You knew that if you did this, I would be here." Bishop clapped Aidan on the back. "So what's our next step?"

"I don't know. This is as far as I got in my plan."

"Well, okay. We'll wander around until the blood you've got in your cute little knapsack is gone, and we'll figure it out from there."

"Can you just be quiet until then?"

"Sure. You've got it. Not another word from me until that last drop is drunk." The hallucination shrugged. "But I'm not leaving, either."

"Fine." Aidan's brows knit together angrily, and he pulled another blood bag from the large pocket on the backpack. Would his wife appear to him this time? His son? Or was Bishop the only hellish memory he was going to burden himself with?

[takes place immediately following this]

Peter was waiting when Evey turned the corner. He had tried to stay away, tried to let her have her own autonomy. It was hard, drawing the lines that separated him from the women who shared so much of his mind, but lines had to be drawn, lest they fade completely. If had been long enough, with her shields in place and her long sleep, that Peter's awareness of her had slid into a peripheral gaze.

( But when those shields came crashing down, his heart had shattered with the knowledge. )

They had professed to one another words that they already knew. They'd done it at the top of the world, though figuratively and not literally. Her mouth had tasted like cotton candy, her skin had been warm, her heart had raced with the anticipation of what she must do. All the while, the words slid out of him like water from an open jar. They had been simple for Aidan to say because he had felt them so long ago and acknowledged their meaning.

It had not taken Peter's words of frustration to open his eyes to what he was feeling, but that hadn't hurt. Having a third party reveal what was there was a little bit like watching the secrets of a magic show. Wonderment at what was actually behind that curtain, yet a part of the brain resounded with sentiments such as ah, yes. Of course..

Aidan understood that they'd both needed to be away from New Troy, die Festung, and the ever present looming death of a world before they could feel comfortable expressing such a bright thing out loud. It wouldn't have felt right there. Despite Evey exclaiming that they should have exchanged this sentiment in the ruins, Aidan didn't believe that it had been the right time. Too much had gone on.

He had been reluctant to part from her after the evening was over. They had shared in the great bonfire, they had walked along the beach. They had held hands and smiled at one another in the goofy way of those who have seen great damage and come through the other side with almost no worries to burden their minds. He had walked her home, still refusing to allow her to say those words and accept him past the door. There was still some settling to do in his mind. Soon, though, he thought. Soon.

As soon as the city outside his window began to wake, Aidan was out the door. He wanted to see if he could catch Evey at what he thought of now as their coffee shop. He raced through the streets, keeping his speed as human as possible. His eyes scanned around him, seeking out the woman he loved.

The color of her hair lifted on a slight breeze. The shape of her form standing in front of the very place he'd hoped to find her. His heart was lifted, and the smaller details escaping him out of pure joy and complete ignorance.

Aidan raced to Evey, snatching her up in a tight embrace, twirling her around in his arms. He elegantly let her slip to the ground again and twirled her with a dance move so that she was facing him. All of it so quick that it was done without real thought. His eyes were closed as he moved to kiss her. To kiss her. He kissed her as much as he wanted, he could do it any time.

As he pulled away, Aidan murmured sweet words. "My heart is yours, Evey Hammond."

His eyes opened.

He stared.

Something was wrong.

The weather in the City was pretty much always perfect. There were days with rain, but they were still mostly warm. But there were still seasons. In fall the leaves fell (the trees were never bare, though), in winter there might be some snowflakes (never anything like the one great storm where the City had gotten carried away), and summers were warm and sunny and nobody had school.

Still, this year, the City felt like celebrating spring. Not any particular holiday. Just spring in general. There were new people around, there were couples in love, and it wanted to have a great big party for everyone.

Overnight, it set up the great festival. Streets all around the park were closed off so that people could walk around without issue. The park itself was expanded to over twice the normal size. A great clearing was made in the center, stretching from one side to the other. There needed to be lots of room.

Through this clearing the City placed tents, stands, and tables. These were filled with food and wares of all types. There were representatives for all the popular shops, as well as some that nobody had ever seen there before. There were stands for balloons for the kids, too, free of charge. And flowers absolutely everywhere. Woven into the stands themselves, laying on tables, set up in vases, growing in every patch that the City was sure nobody would accidentally step on them. Colorful ribbons, some as large as crepe streamers, also decorated everything. The City wanted as much color as it could possibly get.

At one end of the clearing the City placed a small carnival. Rides, games, everything it could think of. Even a petting zoo, though some of the animals within weren't typical farm animals that usually went in petting zoos. At the other it placed a few stages for performances. Concerts, plays, musicians. The stages were all contained within their own invisible sound barriers, as to not disturb one another, but the noise from all could be heard on the main promenade.

It put signs up all over, put notices in mailboxes, ads on the radio, commercials on television, and even made Candy and Frank talk about it on the morning news.

The celebration would go from sunrise to midnight. At sunset, the City would have a bonfire, complete with a pig roast and s'mores. At that time, it would move the park closer to the water, creating a beach between for the bonfire to settle on.

It seemed too good to be true. The weather was just about perfect - not a cloud in the sky, not a cold breeze, no fog or rain - perfect. The streets were clean and well-maintained. The buildings were strong and sound. The citizens were content, there were no signs of sickness in the wheels of the government, and as far as she could tell, there weren't any netvors chasing anyone around. The only things that she couldn't explain were the strangely blank people filling in most of the citizenship in the City. There was nothing offensive or disturbing about them, but they were so....

Well. Blank.

Evey'd taken up a table in a downtown cafe, one hand curled around a hot tea. She hadn't had Earl Grey tea in what felt like ages, and Evey wouldn't deny that she was savoring every second of it. But she was also watching the people around her. They didn't seem to be paying her any attention at all, which was strange in itself, given that the City had paid her quite a bit of attention. The apartment - #1406 - just on the other side of the hall from her best friend, the apartment itself that was stocked full of things she wanted or needed, the strange way she'd been guided around the City, as she asked questions to herself. The answers were never too hard to find. The library, the news stand.... It was as if the City were guiding her itself. And, though she was used to overlords being unkind, Evey felt very much that this City was nothing but solicitous.

It was disconcerting. She was ready for the other shoe to drop, but as the days began to spool off, nothing bad was happening to her. It was damned peculiar.

Evey had either caught sight of or found reference to many people from the fracturing world she'd left behind. Every day, she found more people. The one person she wished she could find, however, proved elusive.

It made this cup of tea just a touch bitter. Evey lifted the china cup to her lips and sipped gently.

"Where are you?" she asked the saucer, as she set her cup down again.

He had been evacuating people from New Troy, making sure that the citizens were getting out, doing what Eric told him to do, staying behind to gather the strays and assuring those who were weak or injured wouldn't be left to the mercy of whatever was happening to the world. Aidan didn't mind, not really. He wanted to help. Of course he did. But he also wanted to find Dean and Evey. Make sure they were okay. The decision to stay and do his job had been a hard one, when all he'd wanted to do was run.

As the last people were being ushered out the gates, another big quake hit. Aidan remembered feeling the rumble of it under his feet before his brain knew what was happening. The world below him collapsed, and he fell. He fell and fell and there was nothing but black. He thought he'd lost consciousness for a while, he had no recollection of the end of the tremor, and the sensation of waking up. Above him was a great chasm, far away was night sky. He'd certainly hit his head, he could smell his own blood. He felt weak.

The sounds of others stirred him from his self focus, he'd called out to them and gotten moans of pain in return. Death entered his nose, a scent he was intimately familiar with. Aidan crawled toward the closest mutterings to try to calm and assess the injured. He found a man with his lower body crushed, a man who was not going to live. Nearby was another, a woman with a broken neck. Another, a woman with some kind of unseen internal damage, Aidan could see her belly swelling with the blood. And another, a kid who may have just barely turned fifteen, bleeding out quickly.

He tried to do what he could for all four of them. The youth went quickly. The woman with internal bleeding, not long after. But the other two lingered. He saw the pale glow of sun twice before they truly started to die. It was then that he realized that unless he helped himself, he would die as well.

It killed Aidan to do it, but he took the crushed man first. Draining him completely of blood, filling himself up. It wasn't much, but it gave him the strength to stand. He cradled the woman softly. He told her that he was sorry. She told him that it was alright, she knew he needed to live, to help others. She knew that she would not, and she wanted to do something good for the world. She told Aidan that he had taken care of her grandmother in the hospital, that he had been kind. If only for that, she owed him.

This made Aidan feel worse.

But he would not squander the gift.

When he was finished with her, Aidan laid her head softly on the ground, and closed her eyes. She looked oddly peaceful, as long as he didn't look at the angle of her neck.

He'd looked up, dreading what came next, but began the climb quickly.

By the time he reached the top, he was thankful he'd fed before beginning. He was worn out. The hole had gone deep into the earth. Miles. His arms felt numb and weak. His legs shook. He'd thrown himself over the edge and managed to crawl far enough away that he wouldn't fall back in, realized that he was laying on grass, and lost consciousness again.

Waking up now, Aidan felt the grass on his cheek, smelled it. The sun was bright and warm on his back. He still hurt from the climb, still felt weak. How long had he been laying out here? Raising his head a little bit, Aidan spotted a child staring at him, eating an ice cream cone.

Ice cream?

Grass?

Aidan rolled onto his back to look at the sky. Beautiful pale blue with white fluffy clouds. Trees surrounding him. The sounds of children happily playing. And... was that a goddamned kite? A dog yipped happily, Aidan's body tensed, thinking it was one of the wild dog packs, but a frisbee flew by over him and a golden retriever jumped him like a hurdle, tail wagging. None of the dogs had been that clean looking. Nor that willing to play.

"What... the... fuck..." he breathed out, wondering if he'd had too much blood. Usually when he was blood drunk, though, he was scarier to look at. And it was people he hallucinated, not places.