AN: Yes, it's another AU! The originality just pours out of me like syrup on a maple tree!
Title shamelessly ripped from Killing Time by She Wants Revenge, which you should totally listen to if you're reading this because it is made of awesome and you will probably love it and if you don't that means you're a communist who likes to eat babies.
That being said, uh...enjoy?
It was strange, he thought, how much comfort he felt from sitting in graveyards. No, not comfort…while he knew what comfort was, he couldn't remember the term ever applying to him. It was…familiar, like coming home. No matter how far he traveled, how many graveyards he visited, they all had the same feeling. Like he belonged there.
Then again, considering the rotting green tone of his skin, maybe that wasn't so strange.
The familiar feeling immediately washed over him as he passed under the wrought iron cemetery gate, eyes roving over the rows upon rows of gravestones that he could just pick out in the dark. It was peaceful in here, a loose gravel road the only thing suggesting that humans ever entered this place. Isolated and quiet; that was how he liked it.
His hands went into the pockets of his long brown trench coat – more for appearances than warmth, since he couldn't really feel the cold wind whipping the trees back and forth – as he wandered amongst the headstones. His glowing eyes roamed over polished marble, reflecting the bright light of the full moon, and the slightly less impressive granite, glowing dully against the white snow piled around it.
It was a fairly old cemetery, with sloppy rows of ground-down headstones scattered below his feet, some of them bearing letters far too faded to make out. The newer ones stood out like shining beacons, lording it over the others as if bragging they had lasted longer.
He wondered what that made him, wandering over the buried bodies as if he weren't exactly the same. Still walking and moving around, maybe, but his lungs and heart had long since stopped serving any purpose. He should be shut up tight in a coffin, under six feet of dirt with the same people he was walking over now. Was he bragging by walking into this graveyard with the body of a dead man? He sometimes wondered if it wasn't the other way around.
He stopped as he approached the end of the row, leaning forward to brush some snow off the headstone. It was different than the others; for one, it wasn't granite or marble, but slate. Certainly not good material for a tombstone. Crooked words that looked like they had been carved in with a bent chisel confirmed that it was a recent grave, with less than a year since the occupant had been buried.
Hanna Cross…
He frowned at the dates underneath the name and did the math in his head. She had been in her early twenties when she died. Far too young for anyone to die, though he wondered if he had any right to judge that.
The snow crunched around him as he carefully sat in the snow, joints creaking. "Looks like you and I will be each other's company tonight, Miss Cross," he said in a low voice, glowing orange eyes fixed unblinkingly on the date. His thoughts echoed back to him: far too young to die.
The thought of saying a prayer for her crossed his mind, until he realized how ridiculous that was. Even if there was a being out there to pray to, this girl was dead and gone. No amount of prayers would change that or make it any better.
Still, he closed his eyes briefly, some strange sense of reverence gripping him for the girl that had been ripped away from life too soon. Maybe it was ridiculous, but it was nice to care about something for once, even if it was his fellow dead.
His eyes opened as he heard footsteps crunching toward him through the snow. It occurred to him that he should hide, but he could already tell that the footsteps were too near for that. Besides, even with the full moon beating down on him, there was a good chance that whoever was approaching wouldn't give a passing thought to his appearance. If they did, well, he would just leave. He was used to moving around anyway.
He listened calmly as the steps got closer and closer – a bit uneven, he noticed – before abruptly halting.
"Oh! Uh…sorry, I didn't know anyone else came out here at, uh…" pause "…3:00 AM." The tall man glanced at the stranger standing mere feet away and found himself staring at a small silhouette with a shock of messy hair sticking up at all angles. With the moon behind him, he couldn't make out any of the person's features. He could tell it was a boy, though; the voice was too masculine to be anything but.
"I'm sorry," he said, voice barely above a whisper. "Do you want me to leave?"
"No, no! I mean, it's a free country and all and it's not like I own the graveyard or anything…well, actually, I do, but that's beside the point. Seriously, though, you don't have to leave …" There was another long pause before the boy leaned forward excitedly, his face mere inches away. "Hey, no way! You're dead too!"
It was then that the zombie realized just what he was looking at. There was no mistaking that glow around the eyes and the sickly tint, not to mention the mess of stitches that littered the boy's face. He seemed fresher, with much less rot clinging to him, but there was no doubt he was face to face with another zombie.
"This is so cool! I've never met another one before!" The boy's mouth stretched into an impossibly wide smile, the stitches on his face straining with the effort of staying in place. "What's your name? Who raised you? How long have you been dead? Did you used to live around here? Wait, you didn't just crawl out, did you? No, you're definitely older than that. How old were you when you died? 30? 40? Older? You look like you were younger-"
The questions kept coming and coming, an endless stream, until the other man wondered if he was meant to answer them at all. Just when he was deciding he had been found by a lunatic, an insistent tug on his arm forced him into a standing position.
"Come on, let's go to my house! There's no food there or anything, but that's okay because you don't eat either, right? Or do you? I've never really met another zombie before, so I don't know if that's just me or not." On and on the boy chattered as he dragged him along through the snow, barely keeping his pace under a run in his obvious excitement.
The taller zombie was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and energy this one seemed to have. It was such a strange contrast to himself, who only talked when necessary and behaved much like he thought a dead man should: quiet, withdrawn, and out of sight. This boy, despite his unmistakable zombie look, barely seemed dead at all.
He wondered about the questions he was being asked, and whether he would have to answer them later when the boy calmed down…if he calmed down. His name? He didn't remember. Who raised him? That was a mystery. How old was he when he died? Only his tombstone knew that, and he had left it behind long ago. If asked, he supposed he would just tell the truth. There didn't seem to be any point in making anything up, and at any rate he didn't have a very good imagination.
"Well, here we are! Casa de Hanna!" He frowned as he was almost literally pushed through the door of a small stone cottage, wondering if he had heard the boy correctly.
"Your name is Hanna?" he asked with a touch of confusion to his voice.
"That's right," the boy said, bustling past him into a tiny kitchen. He disappeared for a moment into a closet, only to reappear moments later dragging a chair to match the lonely one at the small round kitchen table.
"Hanna is not a boy's name." The boy stopped, his face twisting into a grimace.
"Yeah, well, my mother was one of those 'name your children something unique and special' kind of people, so if you want to blame anyone, blame her. Well, I guess you can't technically do that since she's dead now, but hey, so are we, so maybe you can. Anyway, you get used to it." The grin came back to his face like it belonged there as he set the chair down. "Why don't you sit down, uh…hey, what's your name?"
"I don't know," the taller zombie said simply. "I forgot it after I died. You can call me whatever you like, I suppose." It was almost funny, the way Hanna's emotions showed so clearly on his face. The grin fell to be replaced by an "O" of sympathy, though he didn't think it was as big a deal as the boy seemed to think it was.
"That's really sad, not having a name." His face became thoughtful. "How about this: I'll just call you different names until you find one you like or remember yours. Would that be okay, Steve? Richard? Leonardo?"
The taller man's lips quirked into something resembling a smile. He wondered how long it had been since they had done that. "Do you mind if I take off my coat?" he asked, neither encouraging nor dissuading the boy's idea. The grin slipped right back into place.
"I'll take it. Give it here." He slid the brown coat off as quickly as his stiff joints would allow – Hanna was not helping by tugging enthusiastically on the sleeve – and watched as the other boy ran with it to the closet where he'd gotten the chair. He watched the boy raise up on his toes to reach the bar just out of his sight, and took advantage of the first peaceful moment since they met to really look at him.
Hanna himself, besides being a strange enigma of a zombie, seemed to be plenty strange in his own right. His hair was a brilliant shock of red and stuck up at all angles like he had just woken up from a nap and forgot to brush it. He was rail thin, comfortably wearing clothes that looked like they would be snug on a ten-year-old girl, and so short that his stature was nothing short of unimpressive. Still, there was a strange sort of aura hanging around him, as if that small body were hiding something powerful inside it. He made a mental note not to underestimate Hanna, despite his appearance.
The boy joined him again and flopped down in his chair like a little kid, swinging his legs excitedly. "Come on, sit down! Oh man, this is just so cool, I mean, I knew I wasn't the only one, but wow, it's so rare to actually see one that isn't just a walking shell, and most of them can't even talk but you can and it's awesome!" The taller zombie actually felt worried about the stitches on Hanna's face as he carefully sat.
"Are we not supposed to be able to talk?" he asked, curious despite himself.
"Well, not normally, no. My uncle says that necromancers only really raise dead bodies to perform tasks for them, so there's no reason to bring the soul along with it. They can take basic directions, but otherwise they're just walking meat bags. I was a special case, though, and I guess you were too. I wonder who your necromancer was. Hey, how did you die, anyway?" As soon as the question was out of his mouth, the young boy looked mortified. "Oh, sorry! Is that a touchy subject? Do you not want to talk about it?"
He shrugged, his shoulders creaking extra loudly in his ears. "I don't remember that either. I don't remember anything of my life." The sympathetic look was back; he decided he didn't like that look.
"That's so sad that you don't remember your life. I remember everything about mine, but then I guess my uncle made me that way so that's not surprising." Hanna reached across the table for where the other zombie's hand was resting on the wood and started inspecting his stitches with a sort of morbid interest. He briefly considered pulling his hand back, but decided to let the boy do whatever he wanted. It wasn't as if he could hurt him.
"May I ask you a question?"
"Well, you technically just did, but sure. Go nuts." Hanna's tongue found its way between his teeth as his concentration narrowed to the other man's green wrist, palm, and the pads of his fingers. The taller zombie was surprised to find that it felt kind of good to have the boy's hands roaming over his skin. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had physical contact with anyone.
"That gravestone I was sitting in front of…was that yours?"
The redheaded boy nodded. "Mm-hmm, I made it a while back, after my uncle ran off to who-knows-where with his apprentice. It's not like I had anything better to do, and there's not really anything under it – well, obviously, I wouldn't be sitting here if there was – but I just thought it might be nice to have a tombstone even if I wasn't technically buried. It's not like anyone really knows I died, but I think it's important to leave a mark even if my uncle wants to pretend it never happened."
"Mmm…" the taller man said in his throat. He was focusing on the intense expression on the smaller zombie's face. His demeanor seemed to have taken a complete 180 from earlier; was it because he had a task to focus on now? He was sure that knowledge would be useful in the future. For now, he took advantage of the silence to ask more questions. "You keep mentioning your uncle…he's a necromancer?"
"Yeah. Pretty powerful one, too, I mean, look at what he did with me. Not all of them can bring back souls." Hanna's bony fingers moved to his wrist, and the taller man felt a slight tugging sensation but paid it no mind. "He's my mother's brother. Raised me after she died…and then 'raised' me after I did." He chuckled at his own joke, the threat of his grin twitching at the corners of his mouth…only to abruptly drop at a dull thud on the hard wood table. "Uh-oh."
The other man finally looked down at his hand and was admittedly a bit shocked to find it not there anymore. Instead, a mess of useless veins and tendons greeted him, along with the fraying edges of the black thread that had once held his hand in place. His hand lay in the middle of the round table, as still and lifeless as a dead man's hand should be.
"Oh man, I'm so sorry! Uh…thread, thread…" Hanna jumped up from the table and began rummaging in kitchen draws, littering the ground with scissors, tape, candles, and other things in his haste. The other man paid him no mind, instead picking up his hand on the table with the one still attached and staring at it thoughtfully. He wondered if he could move it independently of his body, but after a few moments of trying realized that it was impossible. It was just a dead bit of flesh now, unless it could be reattached. Or maybe it would always be dead, and he just wouldn't have a right hand anymore. He felt that thought didn't disturb him as much as it should have.
Hanna's small green hands snatched his larger one, pressing it half-heartedly to his emaciated wrist as if trying to reattach it by will alone. When that didn't work, he set it down on the table and sighed.
"I'm out of thread," he said apologetically. "I guess I used the last of it to sew my foot back on last week."
The other man decided not to ask how it had come off in the first place. "That's okay. I can wait until you get more."
"No, I was the one messing with your stitches, I should have known how loose they get, that was so stupid of me." He wilted for a moment as if all the energy was drained from him, and then suddenly perked up like a light bulb being turned on. "I know! I'll take you to Worth! I'm sure he has some thread lying around somewhere. And he's a doctor, he should be able to patch you up great."
He decided not to ask, opting instead for complete silence as Hanna fetched his coat and even helped him put it on. He felt like he had used up his quota of words for the night asking what few questions he could manage, and now the need to say even a simple word of acknowledgment was all but gone. Perhaps it was Hanna's influence that had caused him to be so talkative, but it seemed to have worn off and now he was his usual nearly-silent self as he slipped his detached hand into his left coat pocket and followed the redhead out the door.
Once they were out into the cool night air, the older man noticed just how late it really was. The moon, still a flawlessly round disc in the sky, was beginning to sink lower and lower. Dawn was approaching, and with it, the thought of finding a place to hole up where nobody could see him.
He felt Hanna's hand slip into his, his grip surprisingly strong as he practically dragged him through the graveyard out onto the city streets, and found that the other zombie's hands were incredibly rough. He could feel how dry and cracked they were where their palms touched, and in his middle finger he could feel a deep cut that hadn't been stitched up. Just what was it that he did that was so taxing on his hands? No, not just his hands. His whole body. Remembering the comment about his severed foot just raised so many questions about Hanna's life that he both wanted to ask and didn't.
Hanna chattered as they walked, a constant string of consonants and vowels about weather, housework, TV shows he had watched, and "look, there's a rat, does that look like a rat, I think it's a rat." It was almost strange, after years of no social interaction, to have so much of it thrown at him at once. Still, it was enjoyable in its own way.
Eventually, Hanna's voice petered out and was replaced with humming. Loud, off-key humming that cut through the wind-whipped night like a knife cuts through warm butter. Except that knives usually cut through things for a reason; Hanna seemed to be humming just for the sake of humming.
They walked together like that for a while until the taller man suddenly jerked them to a stop. Hanna looked up with his glowing blue eyes, an eyebrow raised. "What is it?"
"That song you're humming…is that Queen?" He knew he had heard the chorus to "Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy" somewhere in that mess of sound. The return of Hanna's grin told him he'd guessed right.
"Hey…is that a memory from your old life, Phineas? Are you remembering something?"
The older man did feel something, like the ghost of a memory lurking just out of reach in his own head. A little girl with golden blonde hair. A small hand grabbing his arm. He tried to reach for it, but like a spooked animal, it ran until it was nothing but a dim buzz. He shook his head. "No…I just recognize the song."
"Well, either way, it's good you like Queen, because I play a lot of it at home. I'll let you look at my collection sometime." As they continued on, the taller man wondered at the barely-there memory that had surfaced. What did it mean, that a simple song had evoked something that felt so meaningful yet slipped between his fingers so easily? He thought about it for a time, but then decided it wasn't worth worrying about. If his memories wanted to resurface, they would, and forcing them obviously wouldn't do any good.
Then he thought about what Hanna had said. Did the boy really intend for him to stay? It made sense; after all, he would want to be around someone who understood what he was going through. Considering their differences, he thought he might not have been the best candidate for that position, but it wasn't like the redhead had too many options.
The more he though about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. He didn't like wandering from city to city for fear of someone recognizing him for what he was. Settling down in one place, especially in a graveyard with another walking, talking dead boy, seemed almost too good to be true. It sounded kind of nice, though, and for a moment he thought he could remember what comfort felt like as he allowed himself to be dragged through the empty streets.
For now, anyway, he could tell that things were going to change. Whether that was a good thing or not, well…he'd find that out later.