Tutankhamunfreak: hey so I know i'm supposed to be working on The Day Everything Changed but I kind of had this idea nagging at me for AGES
Arthur: She keeps talking about it to no one. It's weirder tha Merlin being on time.
Tutankhamunfreak: One, I am not weird, I am individual. Two, this is a Darren Shan fanfiction. you know vampires and vampaneze and people ripping other guys throats out! What the hell are you doing here?
Arthur: I don't know. Maybe Morgana poisoned my wine?
Tutankhamunfreak: Or maybe Merlin just got bored and annoyed with you. I'll ask hims myself but first (turns to audience) thank you so much for reading and sadly I do not own the Saga of Darren Shan or in fact Merlin from BBC though why Arthur has dragged himself here I do not know. please review! darren is not being tortured in this one! He is safe and happy dont worry!
Arthur: What do you mean by Tortured?...
He opened his eyes and blinked in the glare. Everything was white. The lighting, the walls, the sheets… Where was he? The hospital. He tried remembering back but he couldn't remember getting hurt. He could barely remember anything. He had been walking… away from somewhere. A graveyard. The graveyard had been full of people. But why? He racked his brains. A funeral. He, himself had been wearing a suit but he remembered hazily that he had felt nothing. That nothing he had only felt for one person. The only kind of nothing that had been especially reserved for that one person. But he couldn't remember that person's face.
The door opened and a woman came in. He tried to ask her a question but all that came out was a croak. His throat was burning as if he had never drunk in the world. Why was he so thirsty? Had he dehydrated himself on purpose? He didn't know. The woman leaned over him frowning. She opened her mouth to say something… then nothing. A dark blackness just like before.
He opened his eyes again. The same white room. Empty again. A glass full of water was sat on the table next to the bed. The door opened again. This tie he wasn't thirsty but his throat was dry. He reached for the water but the newcomer put their hand out.
"Not yet," said a voice above him. He looked up to come face to face with a teenager. But no normal teenager. This teen was covered in scars. A small triangular scar ran under his eyebrow and burn marks covered his neck as if he had been caught in a fire.
"Who…?" he croaked before his voice gave out. The boy looked sympathetic even though he was only about seventeen.
"I can't tell you who you are. Come tomorrow you won't remember anyway but just in case I won't. Not because I'm trying to deliberately annoy you but because you might remember," the boy said taking his hand off his arm. He doesn't remember who this boy is but something is nagging at the back of his mind. He just needs a moment to think.
"Don't try to speak," the boy said as he opened his mouth to do just that. "It will only make the pain worse." A sudden commotion sounded behind the door. The boy turned towards the door a look of slight panic crossing his face. He turned back to him. "Don't freak out about the date. Just remember this is all for the better. A new life. A new chance. It's more than I had. Good luck." And with that the boy was gone. The blackness was coming back. He thought he saw an old man enter and stare at the boy. For a moment the boy opened his mouth and he thought he saw the boy sink a pair of fangs into the man's neck. Then nothing.
The third time he awoke he couldn't remember that last time. It seemed like a fuzzy dream. A boy with fangs telling you good luck… what strange dreams he had. But he had always had strange dreams. Sometimes they weren't just strange though. Sometimes they were horrible but he couldn't remember them like he couldn't remember the last time he had woken up.
The door opened. He wondered what strange occurrences would happen now. A different man from last time. A new one. He wondered who the woman was. The man looked up from his clipboard and smiled.
"Ah, I see you are finally awake. You were lucky to pull through. That stab wound was quite close to the heart," the man said. Stab wound? What had happened to him? Something from that fuzzy dream came back. Don't freak out about the date… Oh God. He looked around hoping that by some miracle the date would be somewhere. His eyes came to rest across the room where a bunch of x-rays were pinned to a board. His eyes were sharp and picked out the scanner date at the bottom. 5.06.12. He could feel himself hyperventilating. That date was wrong. It had to be wrong. There was no way that could be right. No way could he have missed twenty years of his life…
"Mr Leonard. Mr Leonard!" the man was shouting now. He turned towards the man, his voice returning.
"Who are you? Who am I? Why is the date wrong?" he found himself asking. He felt like a frightened child. The man frowned.
"I am Dr Charles, your doctor. I have been for a while now. You were still conscious when we first met, when you were first brought here. Are you sure you don't remember?" he turned to stare at the man with wide eyes. He was fairly certain he hadn't been stabbed. He was most definitely certain that he couldn't remember twenty years of his life going down the drain.
"I'm sorry I don't know who you are. I don't know who I am. Please, what's wrong with me?" he practically sobbed. It was all too much. What was happening? He felt scared like when he had been a child and his mother had left him in the shopping centre alone. He had thought it great fun at first but after a while he had come to realise that she was nowhere to be found. He remembers hammering the fear down and marching up to a security guard demanding to know where his mother was. It was .like that now except he couldn't control the fear this time. He had no one. She was long gone.
The man leaned back looking uncertain. "You seem to have amnesia Mr Leonard so I will tell you who you are as long as you tell me when you can last remember," the man said. He nodded.
"I remember walking away from my mother's funeral. I remember going to Annie's… I don't know why. It all goes blank there," he said. He could remember Annie. Sweet, smiling Annie who had been so brave when her brother had died.
"When was the date of your mother's funeral?" the man asked.
"December the twelfth, 1992," he said. The man raised an eyebrow.
"And how old were you then?"
"Nineteen," he answered confidently. The man paused and then picked up a hand held mirror.
"I assure you, you are nineteen no longer. It seems you have a serious case of amnesia though I don't know what from. The date is the fifth of June, 2012. Your name is Steve Leonard although your friend's nicknamed you Steve leopard for your wild ways as a child. Do you remember this?" He nodded. He had a name again. "You left home at sixteen but returned three years later for your mother's funeral. Somewhere between that time and when you left again at nineteen you fathered a child with Annie Shan although I don't know where you went after that. She claims you went in search of work to provide a home for the child." He blinks. He never knew that he had a son. He was determined to be a better father than his dad. "You returned home this year. You were entering the city and were stabbed. They never found the culprit although I hear that they tried to get you. Killed a nurse and a doctor but luckily they stopped at that. They haven't been seen since. You are safe now." He nods but is unsure. Something doesn't add up and he is determined to find out what that is.
His name is Steve Leopard and he is going to start a new life. He knows that he doesn't want to remember his past. Something tells him it would be bad.