Well this is emotional. I won't say much now, but thanks everyone for sticking with this. It's been a great journey. Anyway, here's the final chapter.

...

"You son of a-" Stelios thought he was going to be sick. "No, no this has to be a lie!" Please, anyone but Hera! His beloved older brother, the boy who'd raised him since he was a baby, had tried to kill him? He'd killed his friends, not to mention countless vulnerable people, and for what?

Heracles smiled at him, crouching down with that dirty grey hood over his now-greasy hair. Stelios used to love playing with Hera's hair, especially when he was little, and always marvelled at how soft it was- fine, layered- not like his own thin, coarse wires. There was dirt smeared across Hera's nose, jeans ripped and muddy, and if Stelios didn't know any better, he'd say his brother had spent these past months in the gutter.

"What happened to you?" he wailed in a whisper.

"Do you want the full story?" asked Heracles.

"About how you tried to kill me and killed everyone here? Yes."

"You were never in any danger," Hera insisted. "How could I do that to my baby brother?"

"And innocent strangers?"

Heracles sighed. "I have a lot to fill in."

"Oh no, not at all," Stelios rolled his eyes, "I mean, you walk out months ago, everyone thinks you've been horribly murdered and dumped in a trench somewhere, then you show up after murdering hundreds of people. I can figure out what's going on pretty easily."

Heracles didn't reply.

"You better have an explanation for this," Stelios hissed, "can you give me that, at least?"

"Of course." Why didn't Heracles look even a little guilty over this? What the hell was wrong with him? At a stretch, he looked like a child caught with his hand in a sweet jar, too pleased with himself to really care that he'd even been caught.

"Go on then." Never before had he detested it when his brother picked him up, held him. But when Heracles pulled him into a sitting position, it felt like worms grabbing at him, maggots crawling on his flesh and he shuddered and wiggled back to the ground. God, he was going to be sick.

Heracles sat cross-legged, just far enough to be untouchable. "Have it your way then."

"How much of mama do you remember?" he asked suddenly, and the question caught Stelios off-guard.

"Not a lot," he admitted, "and you know that."

"So you have no memories of her smile? Her laugh?"

"No, none at all."

"She would've been the best mother to you," sighed Heracles, "she was to me. Poor Steli. Life has not been kind to you, has it?"

Dead mother and a mass murdering brother? No, it hadn't.

"You were just a child," Hera continued, "a sweet, innocent baby. You barely noticed, besides the funeral, and I tried to keep everything as normal as I could for you, but inside I was broken. Losing mama destroyed me, drove me mad."

"So you came to my workplace and killed everyone?"

"I started looking for a way to bring her back," Heracles explained, "it had to be possible right, to bring someone back from the other side?"

"Of course it isn't," scoffed Stelios. "Erm, right?"

Heracles laughed bitterly. "Well I tried. I researched all I could, about the human body, theories about where the soul could be. Remember those science books of mine you'd sit and read? That's why I bought them."

"So my interest in medicine came from you chasing the impossible? Lovely."

"I made it though," Hera grinned, "an antibiotic to death."

"That's not really what antibiotics are used fo-"

"Brother, I figured out how to bring back the dead," Heracles told him flatly, "is this really the time to be pedantic?"

Stelios shrugged.

"Digging up mama was harrowing though."

"Oh God you didn't, did you?"

"Well, testing on stray cats could only get me so far." Heracles couldn't look at him. "It also couldn't tell me my medicine's effect on humans, unfortunately."

"What the hell did you do to mama?" Stelios hissed.

"I had no idea-" now Heracles looked guilty, "please understand I ran every test I could. I thought it would be fine!"

"What did you do to mama? Tell me you bastard!"

"I brought her back."

"And?"

He didn't reply immediately. "You can bring back the electrical signals in a brain- or what was left of it- but the person? No. I turned mama into a shambling corpse, a brainless zombie."

Stelios shuddered at the thought. "Well done."

"Beating mama to death was the worst thing I had to do," Hera told him, lip quivering. "But she attacked me and… she wasn't there anymore. If you get reanimated, you don't come back, you're gone and your body just gets taken over."

"Like what happened to my friends?" Stelios was going to punch him. The first opportunity he got, he was going to beat the living daylights out that monster that had been his brother.

"And I thought I was mad before..." Heracles laughed at that. "I felt mocked, cheated. I became fixated on death, now that I'd destroyed my mother too far to try and bring her back again."

"That must've been terrible for you," Stelios replied harshly.

"Look, wherever mama is, it's apparently so great she doesn't want to come back!" Hera was on his knees now, practically screaming to the sky. Stelios had never seen him raise his voice before- only once when he was run over as a child and broke his leg. He'd thought Stelios had died then, laying in the road bleeding after the drunk had hit him and driven off. That had been scarier than the thought of dying, the fear on Hera's face.

"I didn't want to live in this much pain," Hera continued, "at one point I thought about taking you and throwing us both in front of a train."

"Well I'm glad you didn't!" Stelios cried in alarm.

"Well of course, I'd just been given a means to wipe out the entire planet and had to do something with it."

"Never mind, I'd have been a small sacrifice." Stelios wanted to throw himself in front of a train now; maybe at least then it would all be a dream and he'd wake up to a normal life, no zombies, no death, and no genocidal Heracles.

"Maybe there would be a new life for us all," explained Heracles, "if we were all dead, then we wouldn't have to have to pain of life. What's the point in this existence anyway? Why do you bother to save lives every day?"

"Because it's my job. Also you don't get to decide who lives and who dies."

"But you do." Heracles smiled curiously.

"Yes, and unless there's no other option, I choose life."

"Why?"

"Because most of the time my patients and their families want them to live."

"Why?"

"You sound like a toddler;" Stelios rolled his eyes. "Because life is too important to just throw away."

"Life is agony," Hera insisted.

"Trying to reason with you is agony."

"Look, we're all dying anyway, why prolong it?"

"Because of friends and family?" Stelios tried, "good food, beautiful places, jokes, laughter, tears. Life is a wild ride; why would you try and deny other people that?"

Hera shook his head. "Because life is meaningless, everything that makes us who we are is fleeting."

"Life and soul of the party, brother."

"So there must be something after, right?"

"Presumably, but I can wait to find out." Stelios doubted he'd have the good luck to do so though; Heracles was probably about to sacrifice him for his perverse mission.

"I know you can," Hera replied with a smile, "that was why I could not allow you to die. I have my mission, after all."

"You released a swarm of the undead in my workplace!" cried Stelios, "What did you expect to happen?"

"I created the resurrection draught," Hera told him, "so it was easy to create a- say- vaccine to keep my dearest Steli immune. Like I said, you were never in any danger."

"Aren't you nice." Stelios made to roll his eyes when a thought struck him. "This vaccine wasn't by any chance oral. And red, for example?"

Heracles looked delighted at that. "So you remember? Yes, I fed it to you as you slept, with a little sleeping tonic to make sure you were too stoned to put it down to anything but a dream. I'm glad it worked though, because it could've backfired horribly."

Stelios couldn't believe this. He shook his head in absolute horror; "so I was just some little science project to you?"

"It had a good chance of working though," Hera shrugged, "I mean, I found a way to get the draught into a living being."

"Oh yeah? That how you infected us all?"

Hera seemed really proud of himself as he explained how he committed mass murder, naturally. "Indeed. All I had to do was mix in some poison. Simple, right? You die, then you're reanimated. Want to know the best thing about the living dead?"

"No."

"They're poisonous."

"Don't you mean venomous?"

"No. They don't contain venom, but the draught seeps out of the pores in their skin, and all they need to do is to break yours. One scratch, one bite, and you're gone just like them. It acts fast too, as I'm sure you noticed."

"Clever," Stelios begrudgingly admitted. "So why keep me alive if life is suffering? Because boy am I suffering right now. I thought you loved me."

"I do love you!" Hera crawled over, reaching out to Stelios. Stelios tried to kick him away, unsuccessful though the man got the hint. "I want you to join me! Together, we can free the world."

"What the actual fuck? No way will I help you!"

"Come on, Dr Angel," Hera grinned at the nickname, "you're a smart man. After all, I've done this many times now, and no one has survived the horde. You got eleven people out; that's impressive." Oh, right. Those others schools and hospitals Carlos mentioned. My my, Heracles had been busy.

"So what makes you think I'd willingly harm anyone?"

"Because you love me too." Heracles grabbed his hand, squeezing gently. Stelios thought his hand was rotting away. "Because you would do anything for your brother."

A plan was forming away in Stelios' head. A stupid plan, but it might just work. "Of course," he smiled, "how silly of me."

Hera's eyebrows shot up. "That easy, huh?"

"Maybe destroying the world wouldn't be so bad," reasoned Stelios, "no responsibility? No long hours at work? Not having to treat my dying maths teacher? I could get down with that."

"You know we would kill ourselves eventually, right?" Heracles asked, "when the world is slain and everyone will be waiting for us? We will see mama again."

"I'd like that," admitted Stelios, "I'd like to meet her."

That seemed to convince Heracles, and he finally cut the ties around his brother's wrists and ankles, pulling him into a crushing hug. Stelios had always loved Hera's hugs, burying his face in the man's big barrel chest, feeling like nothing could get to him.

Stelios jumped up in joy, laughing as he bounded to the edge of the roof. Down below, he could see the police, ambulances like toys with his friends probably inside.

"They still can't break through," Hera muttered, "and they cannot make it up here because I finished what you started." He waved a hand towards the fire escape, the first few levels destroyed completely. "Pathetic."

"Yes, absolutely pathetic." Stelios jumped up onto the edge, arms outstretched as he grinned down at his brother. "Look at them, powerless down there! I feel so glorious! Join me. View your kingdom!"

"If you say so..." Heracles shook his head in amusement as he climbed up too. His smile was wiped from him in an instant as Stelios grabbed him by the throat, throwing them both off the roof and to their deaths below.

If life was so meaningless to Heracles, he wouldn't mind too much, right?

...

Man, okay, hope you all liked the ending and all. Probably not but hey. Next year for Halloween I'll give this a cleanup and iron out bits I'm not happy with, but this fic is basically done. I have an idea for a one-shot sequel focusing on some of the other characters, which might get done, but next year I think 'Home' will take over as my Halloween/October fic, and until then I can draw and work on my other fics. I really want to finish Standing Outside the Fire next, since that's pretty near completion and after that, the rest. Eventually. Oh, and there's my fic for the Hetalia Big Bang. That'll be done around May next year.

Funny enough, I had to go to hospital yesterday [which was why this wasn't finished then] and man was I paranoid about zombies. Even though they don't exist.

Anyway, I started this story on a whim, and I'm glad I stuck through. It's giving me hope that I can finish the rest of my fics, after all. This was fun, writing a whole bunch of my favourites, especially Cyprus, not so much killing them all.

Thank you all so, so much for reading this and sticking with me and my dumb horror for two whole years, it means so damn much to me. Thank you.