Saints and Spirits

And here it is, the final chapter! Many thanks for sticking with me, ladies (I think you're all ladies, I could be wrong). Some chapter notes:
-Keep the name Leglise in mind, you all remember that word, right? It's French.
-trigger warning for people with an aversion to surgery etc.
-I'm serious. If you feel like it's getting too dark for you, skip to the next chapter break.
-please don't hurt me okay I bruise easily

California

Eighteen Months after the Treaty:

Hanna found them covered in dirt and smelling like screaming smoke, dragging their bags and weapons down the ruined streets.

A salt bomb popped underneath his converses—more duct-tape than sole—when he vaulted over a stack of years-old trashbags. His hands glowed faintly, fists swinging as he ran, and his jacket arm was torn at the shoulder seam.

"Holy shit you guys," he yelled, stumbling and losing momentum on the shriveled corpse of something that was probably once a pet. "Gross, ew. Guys, are you okay? Both in one piece?"

"Two pieces," Conrad snorted, adjusted the strap on his bag of reclaimed contraband. "If two of us were in one piece, then you'd have something to worry about."

"Oh," Hanna panted, hands on thighs, "yeah okay, fair point. So what happened? We saw fire and I came running right away, but Victor wouldn't—"

Worth reached over and smacked Hanna on the back. "Doncha worry none, Hanna. Me 'n Princess Peach had 'em on the ropes."

"You—" the magician sucked in a breath, "—you wha?"

"We got 'em good," Worth elaborated, waving a road-burned hand. "Don't reckon a single one got the slip on us. Ain't like ter brag or nothin', but y'won' never see a headshot like her Ladyship here pull off tonight."

Conrad readjusted his bag and looked everywhere but at his companions. "It wasn't really that great," he muttered, scowl twitching uncertainly across his features.

Hanna frowned, made a T shape with his hands. "Time out, hold on. Are you telling me you shot at them?"

A look passed between Conrad and Worth, pursed lips and arched brows.

"Well," Conrad replied uncertainly, "we also blew some of them up?"

In the time it took Hanna to close his mouth, Conrad had switched his bag to the other shoulder, checked his holster, glared at Worth, and settled into a prickly slouch on the edge of the curb. Hanna closed his mouth.

Hanna grinned.

"What was I even worried about," he said, throwing an arm around Conrad's shoulder. His whole body leaned into the squeeze. "You're crazy. You're crazy people."

"Have a little faith in us," the vampire muttered back, like any of this had been his idea at all. But hey, that was alright—share the credit share the blame.

Hanna jerked Conrad off the curb and led the way back through downtown, headed back the way he'd come.

"The council's gonna have a freaking conniption," he laughed, as Conrad stumbled behind him. "Man, I don't even know what I'm gonna tell them. I mean, don't get me wrong I am so totally glad you're both alive but wow, this one isn't gonna look too good on paper. Holy crap. How did you get rid of the Patron?"

"The Patron?" Conrad echoed.

A thin, trifling wind whistled down a nearby alley.

"The Wild Hunter," Hanna clarified. He mimed a rack of antlers with both spread hands. "The honcho. The boss. Mr. Path-Where-the-Lightening-Forks. What'd you do about him?"

Worth snapped his gaze over to Conrad, who was staring back with a look verging on horrified. When had been the last time they saw the Wild Hunter? Before Worth's office? On the street? During the summoning?

Hanna's grin faded. "You didn't take care of him, did you?"

"I can't remember seeing him all night," Conrad admitted, worrying a pale lip with his fang. A thin trail of black blood started around the tip, but he didn't seem to notice. "I shot Hellequin and the dog guy, and Worth took out most of the front runners—"

"I ain't seen the fuckin' carriage all night," Worth grunted. The need for a cigarette reared up and crashed down his throat, and he hurriedly patted down his bags and pockets for a carton. "When y'were up on that buildin'—?"

"No, nothing," Conrad replied, threading a white hand through his hairline. It looked like he was tugging at the roots. "Fuck. Is he a shape shifter?"

"I don't think so," Hanna answered hurriedly, "but don't freak out, okay? Remember the terms, you said till sunrise and…"

The magician twisted around to gesture broadly at the yellow sunrise, indistinct and blinding where its rays burst between the hills and buildings. His fingers stretched out and down, dark against the blond, foggy dawn.

"You made it to sunrise," he finished. He smiled, hesitant, and Conrad's word's from so many hours earlier struck Worth again. If there was no Doc Worth… Hanna looked at him, and there was a blazing moment when he felt that maybe—who knew, maybe—he wasn't the most expendable person on the team, after all.

-A-

"So," Trevin said, examining the unfinished skeleton of one bomb they'd run out of material for, "did you work for an anarchist sect before the Plague?"

Worth paused on his way to the RV cockpit, unpleasantly cold towel mid-scrub across his face. "Wot, me?"

"Yeah you," the kid said, "unless Elvira Queen of the Night has a secret past with the British resistance. I feel like I should make a V for Vendetta joke here. Can I do that? Is it too soon?"

"Eh, we'll let the studio audience judge this one."

Trevin propped up his cheek on his hand. "I missed all the good parts, didn't I."

"Yeah, reckon ya did."

"Hanna literally spent three hours sorting through the wreckage of some rickety apartment building while you were gone. I don't think he found much—the place looked like it was fit to collapse. The, uh, the dead dude was pretty pissed off. I think."

"He'll do that."

"When do I get to go home?" Trevin asked, looking serious again. "I tried to get Hanna to drop me off at the neighborhood while we were driving around in circles uptown, but he just ignored me. I've got this creepy feeling I'm never gonna get off this bus again."

Worth shrugged. "Figgur you can hop the train soon as he decides the adventure's all nice'n done. Hanna's got this bad habit o' pickin' blokes up and carryin' 'em along fer the ride; kid's a fuckin' twister an' he ain't stoppin' tell he hits Oz. Conrad never did manage to hop off. Count yerself lucky if ya don't end up like him."

Trevin chewed distractedly on his bottom lip, and it looked a lot like he was ripping off dead skin with his teeth. Christ.

"Look, ya wanna go back so bad, I'll get Connie ter drive us up now. No sweat. Don't get yer pannies in a twist."

"No, no," Trevin said. "It's okay. To tell you the truth, I'm kind of curious how the whole… Tibenoch thing is going to end."

"OH FUCK!" Hanna's muffled voice piped up from the back room. There was some banging around and then he burst out into the main room like a redheaded bullet. "I forgot all about Tibenoch!"

Trevin frowned. "Were you…"

"Ohmygod we gotta get going—Conrad, Conrad can you get us moving right now?"

"No, really," Trevin asked, "how much of that were you listening to?"

"Where's Victor, has anybody seen Victor? Is he still—oh, yes! There you are! Perfect, load up, we got places to be. Conrad, launch status?"

"One minute, General," Conrad snapped. "It takes a minute to start this thing up and do you even have the doors closed?"

"Uh, wait, okay yes all the doors are closed!"

"How about cups, anything on the tables?"

"No, nope, just books!"

"Is everybody sitting down?"

"Everybody except Worth!"

"Perfect."

And Conrad hit the gas before Worth could grab for a seat.

Ten minutes later, Worth was still lying on the floor, having decided that he'd done plenty fucking enough tonight and the floor was alright with him. Above his head, Hanna was carrying on a onesided conversation with the room in general while Trevin tried not to look uncomfortable and completely weirded out.

"So we ran the intestines up a flagpole," Hanna was saying, chewing animatedly on some apple jerky, "and wouldn't you know it, the wolf came right out of the woods. Like clockwork. I don't know about you but I was pretty impressed I mean wow, you'd think it would work eventually but that was what one minute tops, maybe forty seconds, but after Conrad went missing I was just sure they were in the middle of some kind of epic royal battle—no wait—"

"Battle Royale," the zombie offered, fingers steepled over the tabletop.

"Yes! We were hoping that the smell would distract it long enough to get Conrad an opening 'cause you know he's a really good fighter when he puts his mind to it but nobody really wanted to see him rip out another wild animal's throat with his teeth—"

"Oh and it was so much more pleasant for me!"

"Right yeah, basically nobody had fun that day and hey is that Ples's building that looks like Ples's building!"

"Yes," Conrad shouted back, brows scrunched up in the rear view mirror. "But sit down!"

Hanna grinned, reached across the table and grabbed the dead guy's hand. Dead guy looked down at his black glove, frozen in a half-open movement, and then up again at Hanna's chapped smile. The fingers closed slowly around Hanna's.

"We're gonna do this," Hanna told him, flashing blue and white at the bright center of the world, "this is it. You ready, bro?"

Hesitation. Worth wasn't certain if Hanna saw it, but it was there—a pause in motion longer than the dim serenity of the zombie's usual movement could account for. Some word left floating bodiless in the air around his lantern eyes. Hesitation.

And then an upturn of dry lips, and a soft "Ready".

They pulled into the street in front of Tibenoch's tower, and either nobody noticed or nobody pointed out that Conrad had turned them so the nose of the RV was aimed at the road out of town. Hanna bounced down the steps, dragging Frankenstein along arm-first in his wake.

The barrier tore like spiderwebs around Hanna as he went running across the pavement, fizzling thick and yellowish like sooty candle light where he threw himself through it. The rest of them followed more carefully, and Worth brushed off strands of clinging magic on his way through the breach. Huh. If Hanna tore a hole like that without even trying, the Hunt would have taken the whole building down to rubble.

It was decaying pretty damn fast. What was the damage on that beaker-sniffing pooft anyhow?

"Ya wanna put yer money on radiation poisoning?" Worth muttered without looking back to see Conrad, a step or so behind.

"What?" Conrad asked, sounding nonplussed.

"Tibenoch. Bugger looked 'bout one palpitation off a full collapse. My money's on mercury overdose, where's yers?"

"Oh," Conrad replied. He let out a shallow hissing breath and Worth turned his head just in time to see the vampire viewing the tattered barrier critically, neck craning up to follow the sickly ripples of light rolling up away from the tear. "I don't really want to bet on a man's life and death, even if it is a man who once shot me in the head."

"Th' head," Worth echoed, immediately interested. "Brain damage, wazzer?"

Conrad's lips pulled back from the right side of his jaw in a snarl so deep Worth could see his round white molars.

"No," Conrad said. "It just took off one of my ears. Obviously it grew back."

He squared his shoulders and started back to walking, gaining a pace or two on Worth before the doctor got moving again.

"Din' notice," Worth mused. "Lost track'a you lot after the house went down."

"Yeah well, you missed half the fun you lucky bastard. You and Lamont went skipping off on your merry way down the lane, and nobody bothered to help us with the gasmask musketeer crawling out of the lake. What a fucking long night that was. Almost as long as this one."

"Yer gonna hafta tell me the story then, eh?"

"Oh no."

"Wot?"

Conrad wrinkled his prodigious nose. "Hanna and I swore up and down not to talk about anything that happened that night. As far as I'm concerned, I have convenient amnesia of the whole affair."

"Amnesia's a fuckin' fairy fart urban legend, slick."

"So's your doctorate, Doc."

Up ahead, Hanna peeked his mussed head out of the doorway. "You guys comin' in or what?"

Worth shrugged and stepped on in. The dark rooms stood as absolutely quiet and empty as a mausoleum, the dead man's eyes up ahead twin pinpricks of orange light cast against a doorway. Two times now they had come walking through the dark into this ungodly ticking tower, two nights they had—

Wait.

Worth gritted his teeth and broke into a run.

Around the curve of a doorway with its drywall peeking through, over a desk with its once neatly sorted inbox gathering dust on the flooring, through the stairway entrance and up a flight of stairs, organs strained and exhausted and sinking down to his shoes.

"Worth!" Conrad yelled after him, "Worth where the hell do you think you're going?"

"Shit," he hissed, and the sibilants rattled up and down the endless soaring flights. "How 'bout them vampire ears, Connie, ya hear anythin'?"

"No," the undead man huffed, "you jumpy bastard, I don't hear a fucking—"

The penny dropped.

"Shit," Conrad echoed. They shared a tense glance. "I don't hear anything."

"Dunno if I can run all that after the night I had," Worth admitted, scowling so deeply it nearly hurt. "It's a long way up."

Conrad dug the heel of one hand into his eye, fang bared. "We don't have time for that anyhow. You keep walking, I'm going on ahead."

Worth's vision went momentarily null as he caught a sweater to the face.

"Shit shit damn," Conrad was muttering, ripping off items of clothing haphazardly, "leave my good stuff on a staircase yes like I'm ever getting those shoes back…"

"Whoa, hold yer horses there Casanova, I'm all outta dollar bills."

Conrad paused with one leg of his jeans around his ankle, just long enough to give the doctor a deeply suffering glare. "If this was a normal night I would deck you. Since I did in fact spend tonight trying to make sure your repulsive ass stayed alive, do me a favor and shut up before I have to undo all my hard work."

"What's going on up there?" Hanna's voice called up from the ground floor. "Guys?"

Conrad ripped his foot free with a renewed and startling vehemence. "Watch my stuff, okay? Matching socks are hard to come by lately."

And then he was gone in a faint poof, his blue and white silhouette dissolved into the darkness and a flutter of wings. Fluttering was mostly something reserved for eyelashes and birds, but Worth could make allowances for his ladyship.

A staccato of clanging footsteps preceded Hanna as he jogged up to the second floor landing. He paused, hand on the railing, just behind Worth and squinted through the darkness. "Uh, night vision is failing me here. Where'd Conrad go?"

Worth just pointed upwards.

"Nooo, my night vision still hasn't kicked in, which finger is that?"

Worth gave up and shoved his hand back in his pocket. "Index, nimrod. Conrad went bat."

"Oooh, gotcha, scoping the scene for danger and stuff, right," Hanna said. Then he peered a little closer. "Dude, are you holding his pants?"

"Sweater," Worth answered. "Yer standing on the pants."

"Oh!" Hanna hopped off like he was springloaded. "He'd probably stab me for that."

Worth grunted.

"Soooo," the younger man started, craning his neck up towards the dead air spiraling up above them, "where did Conrad go?"

In the middle of formulating a response—Hadn't Hanna noticed the silence, if he hadn't noticed then was it better not to tell him, should he say something—there was the faintest of cracks followed by Conrad's ever-audible shrieks. Worth was half way up the building before he noticed he was moving.

At the top of the staircase, Worth threw himself through the doorway to Ples's workshop, hands slamming against the frame to catch his balance as he rocketed past. When he screeched to a halt inside the room, Hanna tripped straight into his back and they both went stumbling another couple steps forward.

Conrad—in one piece, apparently uninjured and barely dressed—had squeezed himself into a corner and was clutching at his left wrist, holding the palm away from his chest.

"I touched it," he squealed, "I touched it I touched it oh my god it touched me oh my god Worth, kill it."

Bemused, Doc Worth turned his attention to the pan laid out on the work table across the room and noticed for the first time Tibenoch, smiling faintly next to the twitching, severed hand laid out beside him. Its waxy greenish flesh looked only marginally healthier than the sallow scientist presiding over it.

"Rule'a thumb," Worth said at last, after fully cataloguing the scene, "ya don' gotta shake hands if the hand ain't attached ter nothing', Connie."

"Trousers," Conrad hissed, making a snatching motion in Worth's direction.

Worth considered just keeping them for a moment, and then decided that having Conrad walk around in the mad science lab without pants was just asking for more inelegant screeching. He'd had too long of a night to really enjoy that now.

"What's, going on in here," Trevin pitched in, unevenly, apparently just now having scaled the stairs. Nobody bothered to look back at him.

"Ples was working on a science experiment," Hanna answered, nostrils flaring, "while we were out, you know, trying not to get killed."

"Apologies," Tibenoch replied, sounding the least apologetic of anyone Worth had ever heard. "I was on a bit of a time crunch with this one. Freshness is key, I'm afraid—nothing else will suffice. I hope you'll excuse my pragmatism."

Hanna snorted. "I knew you weren't just keeping that barrier up, I freaking knew it."

"A man has to have his hobbies," Tibenoch shrugged. "Care to explain to me, any of you, why the barging in like escaped cattle was necessary? My work is delicate."

Conrad stopped staring at his hand in horrified anguish just long enough to shoot Worth a questioning look. He didn't need to bother.

"Ya turned off the clocks," Worth said, simply. "Or wotever gizmos y'had tickin' around up here. Thought ya mighta skipped off on us, or got the antler end'a some spook we missed."

"Ah," Tibenoch answered. He looked satisfied, for some reason, or maybe gratified, but who the hell could tell for sure. "In that case, I suppose you'll be wanting me to hold up my end of the bargain now? Judging by your uniformly animate condition, I gather that your venture was successful."

"Plen'y," Worth snarled. "No thanks ta you."

"Never offer more than you've arranged to give, it's just bad business," Tibenoch demurred. He slipped oddly—wildly—discolored gloves off with a smart snap and tucked them into a vest pocket. "Step into my parlor, won't you?"

"That's not ominous," Trevin muttered, still behind them in the doorway. "Isn't he too old to know about that book?"

"It's actually quite an old poem," the scientist remarked, striding across the room, "at least in comparison to an eighteen year life span."

"I'm twenty-fucking-one, what is with you people."

"Moving right along," Tibenoch said. "I'd like to get this done as soon as possible, if it's all the same to you."

He moved jerkily, taking long steps across the floor to the anteroom like a windup toy. In that condition, Worth doubted the bastard was in a state fit to perform any kind of surgery, magical or otherwise. Tibenoch disappeared for a moment and reappeared with a non-descript white mug in hand.

Worth sniffed. "S'that coffee?"

"Yes, yes, it's not very stereotypical is it, but I've had a long night and we have a ways yet to go."

"Nah, I was thinkin' more…"

"Nobody's had coffee for nearly a year," Conrad cut in, clipped tones verging on outraged. "We traded our last can for the life of a small warlord."

"Ah," Tibenoch replied. He looked amused. "Well there are certain perks to living in the heart of an abandoned city, one of which is the scavenging. Or, at least it was, until lately. I have perhaps another few months left in the stock, with some careful rationing."

Conrad's eyes did not shift even slightly from the mug.

Tibenoch lifted his eyebrow. "Would you like some, Mr. Achenleck?"

In the three or so years they had been riding together, Worth had seen Conrad cry exactly once. For a second, he was certain that number was about to double.

"Vampire," Conrad mumbled, "can't drink it."

"Well I want some!" Hanna piped up, oblivious to the intense pain every cheerful syllable caused his miserably handicapped friend. "There's no way I'm sleeping while Victor has brain… magic… surgery stuff. I could defs use the caffeine."

He sounded cheery, yeah, but even a cursory evaluation could tell you the redhead was grinding down to nothing—a night of racing around and magical overtax and stress was taking its inevitable toll—and Worth could easily see him collapsing mid-sentence in a couple hours. It wasn't anything unusual, even on a fairly normal night. What he needed was some goddamn sleep, not coffee.

"Hanna," he warned, brows furrowing.

Hanna waved him off with a disinterested flick of his purplish fingers. "Would you mind, Ples?"

Tibenoch pursed his lips. "Of course not," he said, after a moment, "I do endeavor to be an excellent host, after all."

Worth elbowed Conrad, whispering, "'s that what they're callin' it these days."

But Conrad just stared mournfully at the madman's departing back, without so much as a disapproving snort, and Worth sighed though his nose. "Oh, fer chissakes," he said. "Here, Tibenoch, gemme some too. Lucky fer us I happen ta be an expert in tamperin' with drinks."

"Ah," said Tibenoch. And then he disappeared into the side room.

When he came back out there were four mugs—one thing you could say for the guy, Worth guessed, he caught on pretty fast—and passed them out first to Hanna and Trevin, then to Worth, and then with a sly half-smile to Conrad.

"What?" Conrad said. "Vampire, didn't I just tell you I was a vampire?"

Worth just reached over and popped the drink out of his hands, setting it beside his own drink on the work table. "Ya got any sterile?" he asked the scientist, tapping the rim of one cup idly.

"Afraid not, Doctor. Few of my subjects complain about hygene."

Worth grunted. "Fine. Use my own."

In a flurry of quick movements, Worth drew his scalpel, tipped out a few drops of the rubbing alcohol he carried in his hip flask, and slit his left palm down the fleshy mound at the base of the thumb. A thin hiss seeped through his teeth.

"Oh god, what do you think you're doing?" Conrad demanded, hands spasming like he was trying not to wring Worth's neck on the spot.

"Celebratin', ya prissy twat," Worth replied. He held out the contaminated mug of coffee with a jaunty little bounce. "We survived the night an' kicked motherfuckin' ass. Yer gettin' some goddamn coffee whether I gotta pour it down yer throat or no."

"Oh," Conrad said, looking conflicted. Gingerly, he accepted the drink. "I suppose… you've already ruined it for anybody else…"

Worth rolled his eyes. "That's the spirit."

While everyone was taking sips of the vaguely metallic tasting coffee, Tibenoch directed them to the operating room. It was easy to tell that it wasn't intended for operation on living things—the mess and the lack of sanitation supplies gave that away, if not as much as the preserved specimens tacked to the walls. Something phosphorescent leaked out of a cupboard.

"This is mostly where I do my dissections," Tibenoch informed them in an offhand sort of way, as he cleared off the table. It had straps. Worth felt suddenly doubtful about the whole situation.

"Are those restraints?" Hanna questioned, giving Tibenoch a deeply reproachful look. "Why would you need restraints?"

The scientist slapped his hands together, ignoring the inquiry. "Well, if we're all ready to begin—"

"Mr. Tibenoch," the dead man cut in—he'd been pretty quiet, quieter even than usual—"why are there restraints?"

"Well," Tibenoch said. He paused with his hand on the table, thumb brushing over a tarnished buckle. "I'm about to perform a highly delicate procedure on the most fundamental components of your very existence—everything from the way you move your limbs to the transmittal of kinetic energy in your muscles—will be stripped down to bare equations and laid out under my fingers."

"Um," said Conrad, looking uncomfortable.

"When you tap a reflex point on a human, they kick," Tibenoch went on. "What I'm doing is so much more intimate. Consider that, like Shelley's monster, perhaps you have a strength beyond the capacity of your earliest flesh."

The zombie flexed his hand, peering down at it with a kind of surprised expression like he wasn't sure when it had gotten there. "I'm still not entirely certain what this procedure entails," he said at last. "I do still feel some measure of pain, after all."

"Really?" Tibenoch responded, looking back interestedly. "Do you?"

The dead man inclined his head. "I do."

"Fascinating," Tibenoch replied. "Well in any case I don't yet know how far we'll need to go. We will see what's necessary and what isn't, hm? If you would," he gestured toward the table.

Worth took a gulp of his shitty coffee and then spat it back into the mug. It seriously tasted shittier and shittier with every passing minute. Fuck the apocalypse, fuck it six ways to Sunday.

Frankenstein loaded up, and Hanna bounced nervously from foot to foot like he had half a mind to snag his buddy and get the hell out of dodge before things got any further. Worth understood the sentiment. Still, it was the dead guy's call and he seemed like he was braced for it, so whatever. Honestly he was wondering if Tibs would really open something up and take a look around—Worth hadn't gone into medicine for the money, after all. That curiosity was still in him somewhere, bobbing around on a sea of distrust and fuck-all-this-shit.

Everyone settled in eventually, while their host sorted meticulously through his cabinets in search of everything from stoppered flasks to tiny screwdrivers, pausing to tip the zombie's chin up for a better look at his stitching. Conrad looked back at Trevin, who had shoved himself into a corner and was watching the proceedings with a vague sort of queasy look.

"Do you want to go back to the RV?" Conrad asked him, quietly, as if there was any other conversation going on in that wide silent room. "I can give you the keys, if you promise not to drive it off."

Tibenoch paused in the middle of pouring out something bright red.

"No," Trevin answered, "uh, thanks. But when am I gonna get the chance to see anything like this again?"

Conrad shrugged, apparently having used up all his social graces at that point. He looked like maybe he wanted to say something else, but as ever, he wasn't spitting it out.

Tibenoch started by testing Green's memory, which—although it made plenty enough sense—managed to surprise Doc Worth. First boring little things, basic history, who fought what war, and then weirdly specific things, like police procedural formula and local pre-anarchy laws. In his chair, Hanna yawned hugely and then looked unhappy with himself.

About the same time that Tibenoch started swabbing things and mixing samples, Hanna slipped down into his chair and fell asleep. Conrad looked at the limp magician with a kind of resigned envy.

"Sun's been up for a while," he muttered. Hanna's head lolled to one side. "Suddenly I'm remembering that caffeine doesn't work on me."

"You can sleep," Tibenoch suggested, preoccupied with a vial of clear liquid. "Detective Cross is already lost to us, you needn't feel guilty. As it happens there's a bed in the side room…"

"A bed," Conrad repeated, dubious.

"Technically mine," the scientist explained. "But unused for all of that."

Conrad looked at him. You could see his eyes cataloguing the dark circles and the jutting bones, and the sallow lightless skin.

"Well," Conrad said. "It's either that or the floor, I guess, and if I don't find somewhere to pass out soon I'll probably brain myself on the way down. Worth, do you have my jumper?"

"I had yer pants. Sweater's still on the stairs."

"Fuck. Well I'll see you all tonight, I guess."

Conrad left the room like a shadow, hunched into himself and quiet. Tibenoch watched his retreating back with his burning copper eyes, unblinking and narrowed. In the silence left behind, the faintest ticking noise slithered through the room.

Tibenoch's eyes snapped back to the dead man laid out over his dissection table. He smiled.

"So," he said, "can you tell me what your earliest memory is?"

The dead man looked away for a moment. "A graveyard," he said, slowly, "a graveyard in the spring."

"Was it your graveyard? I mean to say, were you at any point buried there?"

Below a weathered leather cuff, gloved fingers tapped the table. "I don't know," the zombie said. "I have no memory of ever being interred."

"Hm." Tibenoch dug his gloved out of his pocket and snapped them on, one then the other, movements swift and precise. "But how did you get there? Surely someone who had put so much effort into your creation wouldn't simply leave you wander after all that."

"I suppose they might have had generous motives."

"Generous?" Tibenoch repeated, shadowed eyes glittering. "Hah. I put it to you that you are, in fact, a failed experiment. Perhaps cast out of some rural laboratory after your progress fell short of the mark."

"I—"

"Do you really imagine your existence is the result of anything other than sinister purpose?"

"Oi, leave the fella 'lone," Worth interrupted, forming the words with some difficulty. He was determined to stick it out through this whole affair, but Jesus he was tired too.

Tibenoch tipped his head back, the angle striking Worth as just a degree short of truly unnerving. "If you insist," he replied, half-moon spectacles glinting. "I'm simply making conversation."

He laid his hands over the bright orange fabric of the dead man's shirt, fingertips searching for something.

"Ah," he said. "An incision." His fingers traced a wide Y across his subject's torso, the echo of an autopsy cut. "Would you mind terribly if I opened you up and took a look around? I have so much to learn."

"Will it hurt me?"

"I shouldn't think so," Tibenoch replied, already unbuttoning the brightly colored cotton. "The only thing holding it together is stitches—ah, my, very neat stitches—so I doubt you'll feel a thing. The flesh is already severed."

Worth gave some thought to sitting up straighter, trying to get a better look at what was happening, but his limbs were feeling pretty heavy and shit, moving seemed like a lot more effort than he wanted to expend right now. From here he could see just over the green curve of the zombie's ribcage. Maybe he would move, in just a minute. He was reasonably sure that Tibenoch was too intent on gathering information to attempt any kind of sabotage, but… reasonably sure wasn't sure enough.

And how would he know it, if Tibenoch did try something on the sly?

Behind him, Worth heard the soft sound of Trevin giving up and slipping down to sit on the floor. Maybe the vivisection full-view was a little too interesting.

"Oh," the scientist said. "Well. I admit I was expecting something more… artificial."

With a smile that was all half-quirked lips and unblinking eyes, he slipped one discolored glove into the peeled open cavity. The dead man opened his mouth, made no sound, and snapped his hands into fists.

Tibenoch looked up. "Pain?"

The dead man was quiet for a long moment. "I'm not certain," he answered, at last.

"Hmm."

"How will you know when you find the problem?" the zombie asked, blinking rapidly. It was surreal to watch.

"Oh," the madman replied, "that will be the difficult part. But I think… I recognize the handiwork…"

"Whose?"

"You wouldn't know him. He was Herbert's, quite the non-entity that one. Face like a sliding glass door. How fitting that a Watson like him should make a Watson like you."

"But what was his name?"

Tibenoch shrugged, one hand still fiddling through decayed organs. "I honestly can't recall. I came into a few of his notes, after he passed. I don't think he signed even one of the things. Oh! What's this…"

The scientist lifted his hand, and it came up sticky and black.

"This one's still moving," he murmured, then louder: "Did you see my little side project earlier? Of course you did. I've been working on something freelance—I should thank you, I suppose, since in a roundabout way if it hadn't been for you imbeciles dropping a house on me and leaving me to die, I never would have met her."

"Please don't touch that again," the zombie said, politely as you please.

"Can't make any promises," Tibenoch replied.

Something zinged nastily in the back of Worth's head. The moment struck him wrong—something was wrong, something was off—he could feel it in the itching under his skin. He went to stand up, to either wake Hanna up or drag Tibenoch off by himself, and there was nothing. No response.

He leaned forward, barely, and the room swung wildly around his useless body. What—

The coffee. The goddamn coffee. And he had just walked right into it, like a fucking retard, like a goddamn old fucking man, had he really just let that happen and had he really gotten that stupid?

He must have made a noise, falling back into his chair, because Ples looked back at him, his wide white teeth the center of a world that was spinning eerily into blackness. Tilted into shadow, with his sunken eyes and his grinning mouth, he looked like a skull.

"Still awake?" he asked.

Worth struggled to stand. His bones were shot full of cold lead.

"No matter," Tibenoch sighed. "You won't be moving from there any time soon."

"What's going on," the zombie demanded, his dry, calm voice a warning as formidable as a rising hurricane.

"Can't you guess?" Tibenoch asked him, leaning in close. "I drugged them. Much neater this way. I'll be needing to leave once I'm done with you—places to go, research to debrief, you know how it goes—and I really don't have time to muddle through the here and there of moral ambiguity with you all. I've been penned in here much too long."

Somewhere, a clock chimed.

"Now," Tibenoch began, as blackness swallowed Worth's vision, "let's see about that heart…"

-A-

Worth dreamed, if you could call it a dream.

He was the darkness, and the silence, and the featureless everything that shifted inside of it, and the light that burned, and the void whispering,

"A failed project,"

"stitched together miserably,"

"and tossed away."

-A-

When Worth woke, it was in the same way that you swim up to the surface of a lake—with lots of struggling and without handholds, and then a snap as you break the surface.

The room was dark, almost perfectly so except for the phosphorescent glow of whatever sick science project Ples had left in the cabinet. Worth's hand shook slightly as he pried himself up into a standing position.

"Oi, dead guy," he managed, voice coming raspy and dry, "say somethin'."

Nothing.

"Shit," he hissed. He did not bother to ask himself why there was no orange glow lighting twin circles on the ceiling.

Hands groping wildly in the darkness, the doctor went searching for Hanna in the emptiness to his left, toes swinging a wide arc in search of chair legs. There. He went down, knees first, and ran one hand over Hanna's chest while the other pressed unsteady fingers into his jugular. Pulse. Thank god. No wounds, as far as he could find—no blood, or any other fluid, no inflammation in the face or elsewhere, fingers cold but not dangerously so—

Hanna was alive.

Worth stood up, a little steadier for knowing. The operation table had been directly in front of him, if he just moved forward he could probably—yes, he could barely make out the outline. He stumbled over to it, feeling for the neck (head still attached, good, Christ, well that was the worst avoided) and then the exposed chest, searching the cool skin for the pinned corners of flesh.

His hand slid between two flaps and grazed something oily and plump. The zombie's whole body spasmed, and then two slits of amber light seeped through the darkness.

"Hanna?" he asked, sounding far away.

"Hanna's fine," Worth replied, tersely, fumbling with the restraining straps. "He din' touch him. What's yer damage?"

There was a shifting sound, and a movement through the body like the dead man had shaken his head. "Physically," he said, "I am… functional. But I am not. I am not okay."

"Shit," Worth said, for the second time in as many minutes. "Well who the fuck would be. Hold on, I'm gettin' these motherfuckers loose for ya."

The second the straps popped open, the zombie was pushing himself up and off the table before the leather even touched the tabletop. Worth grabbed him by the shoulders, catching fist-fulls of open cloth.

"Siddown," he said, "ya want yer spleen on the floor? Christ, I dunno if I kin fix that kinda damage."

"Organs don't work that way, and we both know it. I have to see him."

"Yeah, human organs don't. Ya don't know shit all about how yer insides work."

"I have to see him."

"I tol ya he was alright!"

"With due respect, doctor," the zombie replied, granite and steel, "I need to see for myself."

Worth let him go.

"At least lemme unpin that skin," he mumbled, hands flying. "Y'can hold it together yerself if ya really gotta move."

That turned out to be pretty easy. Torso secured, the dead man swung to his feet and started across the room, but Worth didn't see it. He was already fumbling for the door, anxious to get out of there and into the main room, where there was light filtering down through the cracks in the ceiling and blood slicking the floor—

Fuck, god fuck, he didn't have time for that. He'd come back.

Around the corner and into the side room where the stillness in the darkness could have meant anything, searching for the bed, Worth banged his shin on the table and didn't notice until hours later.

His hands found a whole, lukewarm body wrapped in sheets, and. And.

Worth's forehead was pressing down on Conrad's and he wasn't sure how that had happened.

Okay, alive, everyone was alive or some approximation thereof, except…

Worth dragged himself away from Conrad, head feeling hollow as he made his way back out to the operating room. Though he had slept, had been a false sleep, forced, and he didn't feel rested. His limbs still maintained an edge of disjointedness, forcing him to concentrate on his movements. He passed the bloody smear in the main area with a slightly longer look this time, long enough to confirm his suspicions.

When he stepped back into the dissection room, the zombie was standing beside Hanna's small form, one of his hands palming frizzy ginger curls, and the other still clutched at his own sternum. Inky fluid was dribbling its way down leather covered fingers. Worth grunted, and the zombie's eyes flicked over towards him briefly. "Tol' ya he's fine."

A hum of a response. "Perhaps fine is a relative term, doctor."

"He ain't dead."

The corner of an olive mouth twisted. "Perhaps dead is also a relative term."

There wasn't much Worth could say to that, so, instead, he said, "Sit yer ass back on that table. Yer leakin' everywhere."

The zombie blinked and looked down at his hand. "So I am. I hope you'll be understanding if I would prefer to lie elsewhere."

"Wherever. Ya kin take th' floor fer all I care." Worth had long ago learned that appearing to be ignoring someone often led to them doing what you wanted. As such, he turned and began rummaging through Ples' assortment of torture instruments, looking for specific tools. Forceps were goddamned everywhere, and he tried not to think about that for the time being. While his fingers moved, he grumbled. "Ain't havin' ya drippin' an' open when Hanna comes to."

Light scuffing of shoes informed Worth that the zombie had decided to move. Good. It was about time someone started listening to him. The hand that had briefly been within the zombie's body was giving off an odor, medicinal and vaguely familiar, but there was something else within the chemical concoction that he couldn't quite place. He yanked a drawer open, finally finding a spool of thread. Now to just find a goddamned needle. "He say anythin' ter ya?"

Dead Man Walking sighed, a sound that was somehow wetter than the sort he usually made. "He said...many things."

"He say anythin' about actually fixin' ya?"

"I...believe so. I am afraid I did not fully understand all the things he was saying. He seemed to switch personalities several times. Strained. Frantic. I do not know what was scientific, what was arcane knowledge, and what was merely the ramblings of an insane man."

"Sounds like a drunk Hanna."

"I prefer a drunken Hanna, doctor. The worst he has ever done to me is cry on my shoulder."

"So he jus' leaves th' vomit cleanin' ter me." The next drawer was full of strangely shaped tools Worth didn't understand. His hand brushed against something that felt like it touched him back and he slammed the drawer closed. "Gonna start chargin' him double."

It took opening a tall cupboard and dumping out the contents of the boxes contained within it with harsh, rattling clangs onto the surgical table before Worth finally found his proverbial needle. Fucking finally. Threading the needle in the dimly lit room wasn't the easiest, but he managed well enough before approaching the zombie, who had apparently taken Worth's off-handed remark to heart and had actually decided to lie on the floor beside Hanna's chair. Sitting beside the zombie, Worth gently pried the gloved fingers from the desiccated flesh and peered at the inside of the zombie's chest cavity.

"Gotta be honest here," he said after a few moments, "I only got a general goddamned idea of wot I'm lookin' at."

"Ah. Well. That would be a much better goddamned idea than I have."

In spite of himself, Worth snorted a laugh. "Anythin' feel—Christ, I dunno. Broken? Painful? Placed wrong?"

"For lack of a better word, I feel sore."

"Doubt a cold compress an' a painkiller'll help much."

"I'm in agreement. Though I am not opposed to trying."

"Eh. Gonna...sift around I s'pose. Wanna be sure he didn't stick nothin' in there b'fore I sew ya back up."

Glowing eyes rose to inspect the ceiling. "Of course."

Worth's hand slipped inside. He recognized some of the anatomy, skeletal structure was where he expected it to be, for example. Other parts, the ones that made the zombie jerk when his fingers rubbed across them, those he didn't know. It felt intimate and somewhat awkward, the zombie splayed open to Worth's probing fingers and he was suddenly glad he'd never pursued his oft joked of interest in gynecology. He was about to make mention of his inner thoughts when he felt something that definitely should not be inside a body, and the zombie's hands instantly gripped Worth's forearm.

"That," he said, eyes as wide as Worth could remember seeing them, "Please don't touch that."

"Was it there b'fore? Issit wot he was," Worth hesitated, careful with his next word, "messin' with?"

The usually blank canvass of the zombie's face broke—too human, too delicate, it looked up at him with something verging on panic, and again Worth was struck momentarily dumb by the moment. "Yes."

From what his hand could gather, the thing in his hand was made of fabric, some sort of cloth bag with irregularly shaped things residing inside it. He had seen them before, though he never knew the specifics what was inside. Various herbs, twigs, metals and bones - Hanna was always vague when Worth had shown an interest. Grisly bags, he had called them, or something like that. What little he'd gathered was that contents varied depending on what one was using the bag to do. Hell, they'd run into this damn place wearing freshly made ones the previous evening, though he had a feeling the one he was holding was something far more powerful and dangerous. A pulling ache was growing in his hand, in his tendons and joints, slowly stretching from fingers and palm up through his wrist and into his elbow. He swallowed. "If yer sure it oughter be there..."

"Yes," the zombie's grip loosened. "Please."

"Right," and his hand released the wet, lumpy thing, pulled itself free of the body beneath. Sludge clung to his skin, dull and dripping slowly off his fingers like molasses. It was odd. He'd always assumed if the zombie was dry on the outside, he must be dry on the inside, too. Well, that was magic for you. Never worked quite the way you figured; always left a residue of some sort. Worth stood and looked about quickly. Near the operating table there was an apron, stained and stiff looking, but it was better than nothing. After grabbing it and wiping his hand and arm off, he brought it with him, dropping it by the zombie's feet before sitting down beside the reanimated man once more. "Gonna try ter use th' holes that're already here. Don't see no reason ter add new ones."

"Thank you."

Two pairs of thumb forceps slid comfortably in place in his hands. Gripping a flap of skin with one, he lowered the needle with the other, wriggling it through leathery holes as he began to carefully pull the body back together with a running lock stitch. "Thank me after we get ya closed up. Been a long time since I worked on cadavers 'n' ya ain't exactly got th' kinda stretch in yer skin that I'm used ter." The motion was familiar, one he had performed time and time again.

"Then I shall withhold my appreciation until you deem it appropriate."

Worth frowned slightly, hunched over his work. Lift one side of skin, pull needle through. Lift the other side of skin, pull the needle through. Loop. Knot. Repeat. "Not sure if yer tryin' ter get sassy with me here or not."

"A mystery for the ages."

"Don't sass th' man with th' needle." Loop. Knot. Repeat. "I might stitch a surprise on ya."

"Of course, doctor. My sincerest apologies. A surprise piece of cross stitching is certainly what I'm most concerned about right now. What did you have in mind?"

Pull through. "Figured I'd go traditional." Loop. "Home, sweet home." Knot. "Classy an' a classic." Repeat.

"I see. I can appreciate that, but might I suggest going with 'brains, sweet brains' instead?"

Repeat. "Ya don't even eat 'em. How d'ya know they're sweet, mm?"

"A valid point."

Repeat. "Mmm hmm."

"Doctor."

Repeat. "Yeah?"

"What should we do about Trevin?"

Needle paused as Worth's brow furrowed, jaw tensing. He took a breath and finished the last few stitches and knots. "Ain't much we kin do. Hide wot's left of 'im. Sit up 'n' see if th' stitches are holdin'."

The zombie sat up and touched his chest, fingers splaying wide, hand sliding up and down the knit flesh. "It appears that which is inside is remaining there. Again, I give my-" his words stopped short as Worth's fingers felt along his back. His head bowed slightly. "They were not of Ples' doing. They are from before."

The lines beneath finger tips were clean, and there were several. The skin had been sewn together, sealing the wounds. The body hadn't healed on its own. He pulled back. "D'ya remember it?"

"I did not. Ples, however, was helpful in bringing back those memories. I would have been content for them to have remained hidden. Also, a name. Church."

"You?"

"No, my apologies. It was a name I heard shortly before my death. A woman. Miss Church. I do not know how she is involved. Ples seemed most interested in her, however. I believe he may know her or know of her. She is connected to...how I came to be. The actual makings of me are still a dark void. I have some memories of the time before," he blinked, " and more after. The strongest, most vibrant memories are those I have gathered over the past years."

"Yeah, well," Worth pushed himself up and off of the grimy floor. "Put yer shirt on. I wanna get this taken care of b'fore anyone else wakes up."

Wordlessly, and in that strange, swinging way of moving he had, the zombie rose and retrieved his neon orange shirt from beside the surgical table. The two walked together to the body, and together, they lifted the shell that used to be known as Trevin by arms and legs, carrying him to the side room Ples had used to make drugged coffee. Through an unspoken agreement, they positioned Trevin's body in a corner behind the table holding the coffee maker and covered it with a sheet from the surgical room. Neither addressed the gaping hole in his chest, or the missing eyes. Some things, Worth had learned, were better to simply not talk about.

Task completed, the zombie passed through the main work room and resumed his silent watch over Hanna while Worth attempted to reenter the back room to check on Conrad. However, as he reached for the doorknob, the doorknob moved and the door opened. Suddenly face to face, Conrad made a strangled "Ooof!" sound and slammed the door back in Worth's face.

Hands on hips, the doctor sighed. "Somethin' th' matter, yer ladyship?"

Pouting, Sleeping Beauty pulled the door back open, and shoved his way past Worth. "I just...you startled me. I had a good sleep and suddenly there's your face."

"Uh huh."

Conrad cast a baleful glance over his shoulder as he continued to walk through the work room and towards the operating room holding Hanna and the zombie. "You look like shit, by the way."

"Uh huh."

That made him pause and turn around fully, just steps from the surgical area's open doorway. "Stop 'uh huh'ing me."

"Awright."

"Ugh, of course." Conrad ran a hand through his hair in what Worth assumed was an attempt at reducing the imagined bed head issues. You didn't get bed head when you didn't move in your sleep. He hadn't exactly ever explainedthat to Conrad, though. "I wake up in something resembling a good mood and you've gone comatose on me and why does it smell like blood?"

"No reason."

Red eyes narrowed "As if that wasn't the biggest crock of shit I've heard."

Worth responded by looking as bored as possible. "We're in some crazy asshole's clock tower full'a dead bodies. There some fancy reason why it oughter smell like blood?"

"Well—" arms crossed over Conrad's chest, eyes remaining narrowed as he clearly gave the question thought, "—it's just that it smells fresher than I remember."

"Good sleep'll do that ter ya. Colors are brighter, smells smellier."

A bit of the suspicion lifted. "Smellier?"

"More odorous or wotever." Worth waved one of his hands dismissively. "Yer up. Let's get Hanna up an' get out."

"Yes, good, but, wait." He looked around. "Where's Ples? You didn't mention zombie. Did—oh God did something happen?"

"I'm afraid things did not turn out as expected."

Worth looked from Conrad's face through the doorway to where the zombie was speaking and helping a clearly groggy and mumbling Hanna to his feet. "No, no pancakes, Hanna. I am sorry."

Some relief lowered Conrad's shoulders a fraction. "How 'not as expected' are we talking?"

"Yeah, wait, mojo. Did he mojo you?" The heel of a ruddy hand rubbed at Hanna's right eye, pushing his glasses askew. "Did he mojo your jojo?"

"No. It was unsuccessful. Ples has left, and I think it is time we make our leave of this place as well."

"Wait, left?" That seemed to have roused Hanna from most of his drug-sleep induced stupor. "Not cool. No way. Leftleft?"

As if on cue to be the biggest pain in the ass possible, Conrad's eyes sharpened again. "Where's Trevin?"

"Left, too." Worth responded, feebly.

"Left? Like uhhhhhhhhhhh what?"

A leather gloved hand cupped Hanna's shoulder, gently but firmly steering him out of the surgical area and towards the exit. "With Ples. He left with Ples."

Conrad's considerable nose wrinkled, nostrils flaring in faggish indignation. "Why on Earth would he do that? Why would anyone do that? We're clearlythe safer group to be with."

"He wanted ter get outta here, remember?" Now Worth was doing the maneuvering, a hand on the small of Conrad's back. It earned him a quick flailing elbow to the gut.

Nearing the doorway to the long staircase, Hanna twisted in the zombie's grip to look back at Worth and Conrad. "Yeah, no, that's totally—" he stopped, eyes going flat as they fixed on a spot just beyond the man and the vampire. Worth mentally swore. "—No bueno," he finished, quiet. He turned the rest of the way around, suddenly far more complacent under the zombie's guiding hand.

The look hadn't been lost on Conrad, who turned as well, gaze drifting over by one of the work benches. His body stiffened and Worth didn't have to ask what it was that he saw. "I didn't smell fresh blood for any particular reason. I'm sure there's no particular reason right fucking there." His glare turned itself on Worth, hard and cold. "And Trevin went with Ples."

"That'd be about wot we said."

"And when do you think you'll tell me what the fuck actually happened here with Ples?"

Hospital reeking hands shoved themselves into the front pockets of Worth's jeans as his shoulders slumped into a familiar hunch. "Mebbe about th' time ya tell me wot happened with you 'n' Ples."

Without waiting for Conrad's reply, he walked out of the room and made his way down the stairs, Lamont's cross warm against his chest.

-End