we pull apart the dark

chapter two

[  note: trigger warning for this chapter!
it includes the topic of suicide and the description of a dead body.
please read with caution, i'm sorry. it was important to the story.]

A lot changes when you're on the brink of death. What started off as something as simple as a common cold grew to be something so much more fatal. The medications, vaccines and knowledge we have now weren't available years ago and so many suffered from it. Assuming you'll recover and bounce back to your normal self, only for things to plummet and your symptoms worsen until you are literally gasping for breath.

Imagine suffering for days on end, your family feeling helpless and afraid for what could happen because they don't know what to do. How to help you, you're unwell and miserable and they just have to sit back and watch. Multiple hospital visits didn't seem to be worth it because nobody knew how to help, how to make any of the side effects better. Everybody deep down knew what would come of this. You were too far gone to recover and survive.

Maybe he picked it up on that trip to Rhode Island last summer, maybe he should've made sure the things he came in contact with were sterile. There were so many possibilities but in the end, he got stuck with it and now had to suffer with it.

There are so many possible causes for Influenza and Gerard being as social and outgoing as he was, made it harder to narrow down how he contacted it. Influenza was an odd disease in the way that it started off with common flu-like symptoms, so at the time Gerard and his family hadn't thought much about it. He stayed hydrated and rested and did everything in the book that swore to make him better but in the end, his health only deteriorated.  All they knew now was that he didn't have much time left. What they didn't know was that, his human life may be ending. But another was only just beginning. He couldn't quite remember how the next phase of his life happened, who he encountered that changed everything. Pulled him away from his family and claimed to have rescued him, but he wasn't thrilled about it.

All he remembered was his body practically giving out and being too weak to even lift his head. He spent his final days in a hospital that provided the utmost care, tending to their patients and making the most of their last few days. Eventually he was unable to take in anymore oxygen, despite how much his body begged for it. He could feel it getting harder and harder to breathe, the feeling of fluid filling his chest and lungs, as if he were underwater and felt grateful at that moment that his family wasn't there to witness the state of him. He was embarrassed, he couldn't bear the sight of them blubbering over him on his deathbed. He accepted that he was going to die. It was a given, but he didn't expect what had happened next.

Gerard couldn't change anything now, being stuck frozen in time. Being alive but not entirely, all he remembered was a sharp pain in his neck, blackness and excruciating pain throughout his entire body and then he was opening his eyes again. But everything seemed so clear, crisp this time. Colors more vibrant than before, his hearing and sense of smell had improved tremendously and he swore for a brief moment he could hear a faint heartbeat in another room that didn't come from a monitor.

It took him longer than it probably should've to piece together what had happened. The last thing he saw before his body gave out entirely, before the pain and blackness, there was a glimpse of a wicked smile; teeth abnormally long and sharp and then there was nothing. Until suddenly, there was everything, all at once. Almost like he was hit in the face by a truck, it felt like his senses were on fire.

Disgusted and ashamed with himself, now. Thinking he could have always driven a stake through his heart if he really wanted, but he wasn't that dramatic. He was quite the drama queen, but not in the way he'd kill himself out of spite and just because he was unhappy. He had to learn how to be a person again. Everything about his new life was almost the same, just enhanced times a million. His sense of smell was absolutely overwhelming, one specific scent flooding all of his senses at all times. The smell was overpowering, he could almost taste it, his mouth watering and throat stinging with need. He tried to avoid leaving the vacant house that became his new home, to avoid the temptations for the first week or so after his new... Transformation. But there was a particular fault in his plan. If he didn't feed, he would get weak and get very, very sick. Gerard hated being sick.