An unprecedented viral outbreak alters the course of Richard Castle's life forever. AU-Post-To Love and Die in LA. Caskett.
A/N: This does toe the line of 'sci fi' so if you're not interested in that I understand.
The streets were silent; eerily silent.
This was New York City, for god's sake; honking horns, squealing brakes, and the hum of traffic were virtually a constant presence, but not that day. Not the day before, either. Not for…well, it was going on three weeks now, wasn't it? Three weeks; three weeks was all it had taken for his world to change irreversibly.
Richard Castle stepped up to the edge of the sidewalk in front of his building and scanned the streets for an available cab. The citywide ban on public transportation had been lifted just two days earlier, so the cabbies should have been back at it—trying to make up for two weeks' worth of lost wages—but there wasn't a yellow car in sight. He couldn't say he was shocked, but that did present him with a conundrum. The subways still weren't running, and it was too far to walk to the Twelfth. He briefly considered walking the handful of blocks to Bloomingdales, thinking there would be a cab or two waiting there, but then he realized that a department store would probably be one of the least visited locations these days. Sighing to himself, he made a one-eighty and walked back towards the apartment building so he could get his car keys.
Eight minutes later, Castle eased his Mercedes out of the entrance to his building's underground garage. Without much traffic, he was able to pull out onto Broome Street smoothly and then turn up Lafayette so he could make his way uptown. Block after block he drove, seeing hardly more than a few dozen cars and only stopping for traffic lights. Since when were the streets not gridlocked on a weekday late in the afternoon? The hairs on the back of Castle's neck stood up as he saw a handful of individuals making their way down the sidewalk—men; only men. It was so strange; had it be any other day he would not have thought much of it, but in that moment he wondered just how long it would be before he passed a female on the street.
As a mystery writer with a poorly hidden flair for drama, he had envisioned countless s scenarios in his mind over the years. Some had made it to paper; some had not. Of those that had not, the vast majority were of the murderous kind. Some were simply implausible; some skirted the edge of potentially realistic, but continually escaped his grasp when it came down to hammering in that last plot detail to make the scenes mesh together. Still others were shelved because they were simply too gruesome to imagine or describe to his readers.
Of those scenarios not murder related, many of them strayed into the genre of post-apocalyptic. As a practicing enthusiast for zombie apocalypses, the vast majority included the undead in some way, shape, or form. What lay in among rotting corpses come to life involved nuclear holocausts, asteroids crashing into the earth, and, of course, an alien invasion or two.
In his forty years of imagining scenarios, Richard Castle had never come up with one as close to the reality he faced presently in the wonderful city of New York. He doubted anyone could have predicted this. Not even the most twisted of minds. Had he pitched such a scenario to one of his publishers he was certain they would have impolitely rolled their eyes and called him a crazy person. "No one will read a book like that, Mr. Castle; it just doesn't make any sense." He imagined they would have said something similar. Yet, there he sat, in a world forever changed.
The nightmare had started just three weeks prior. On a Friday, just a week after returning from L.A. with Kate, Castle decided that he needed a long weekend in the Hamptons. He bid goodbye to his mother and daughter under the guise of needing to visit the home they hadn't been to in several months and make sure it was ready for the upcoming summer, but that reason was secondary. Simply put: he needed a break.
In some ways, his journey west with the lovely detective had strengthened their partnership. By speaking to him about Royce the way she had, Kate had opened up to him more than ever before and that was a good thing; there was no doubt about that. They'd also had a moment in their hotel suite—a moment that, while heart-stoppingly lovely, had also failed to become more, just like all the others. Castle wanted more—god, did he want more—which was why returning to the precinct two days earlier to see Kate hugging her doctor boyfriend goodbye stung with extra force.
Castle couldn't understand it—he truly couldn't. Was Josh a good man? Probably; Castle didn't know him well enough to appropriately judge. He was a doctor who did charitable work so he certainly wasn't a bad guy, but he also wasn't the right man for Kate; Castle knew that deep within his soul. He was the better man for her—he was! And, yes, his opinion was far from objective but he knew—that moment they'd had in the hotel suite solidified it even more in his mind. He knew he was the best man possible for her, yet she didn't see it—or couldn't. He was deeply entrenched into the "just partners" position and, at that particular moment, he was too deeply in love with her to care, but that didn't mean her intimate moments with Josh didn't chip away at his heart each and every time he witnessed them.
Deciding a break would be the best thing to clear his head, Castle had made his Hamptons plan and embarked on the several hour journey just after grabbing an early lunch. For the first half hour he listened to talk radio, and briefly heard a news report about a flu outbreak striking the city, which seemed particularly odd given how close it was to summer, but he didn't think much of it, changed the station, and finished out his drive listening only to music.
Saturday morning after a long walk on the beach, he turned on the TV while making his brunch. Once again there was a report about the flu outbreak, that time stating that the CDC was investigating, because it appeared as though the flu virus was affecting mostly women. When he heard this, Castle gave his television a peculiar look. He'd never before heard of a flu virus—or, really, any virus—being gender specific and he wondered at that time if the reporter had made an error.
Castle was so dismissive of the bizarre report that he never even thought to call his mother or daughter to check in; he simply continued on with his day: checking on their pool chemical supply, throwing sheets in the laundry to freshen them up, and trying to think his way through the next case Nikki and Rook would face. It wasn't until dinner time that he booted up his laptop and checked his social media accounts; only then did he become alarmed.
Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles in addition to the Big Apple were all trending—all seemingly suffering from the inexplicable women-only flu outbreak. Equally confused and intrigued, Castle began searching the hashtags and looking for posts and articles that would give the real story—not the glamorized media version. He soon learned that hospitals in all five major cities were being overrun with patients suffering from high fevers, nausea and vomiting. Other posts were encouraging everyone to stay home and wear masks if they needed to be out in public, for tens of thousands seemed to be getting sick overnight.
After an hour of reading bleaker and bleaker tales, Castle phoned his daughter to see if she'd heard about the outbreak. Evidently, Alexis had spent nearly the entire day studying for her exams and only ventured out for dinner a few hours earlier. At that time, she'd seen an atypical amount of people on the subway wearing masks, and asked her friend what was going on; that was the first she heard of the virus. Castle told his daughter to stay in for the rest of the weekend and went to bed that night only moderately concerned about the illness. By the next morning, everything had changed.
Even three weeks later the knowledge they had was inconclusive. Bio-Terrorism was the term being floated by the media outlets and it seemed as appropriate as anything, though the perpetrators had yet to be found. The CDC had no official comment on the outbreak other than it was categorized as being "under control," so most of the raw information came from the internet; that's where the true horrors of what happened could be found.
Not one single man had come down with what had been dubbed the XX Plague. Of all the cities hit, the women of New York, Boston, and Chicago had been hit the hardest. Some sites estimated over sixty percent had been infected, others said upwards of eighty. The disease, they believed, was airborne—that explained how it spread like wildfire through each metropolitan area—and one of the most severe and fast-acting cases of the flu that had ever been reported.
As unsettling as those factors were, they were not the most terrifying. Within one week it became evident that it didn't seem to matter much whether the woman was young, old, healthy or chronically ill; the XX Plague didn't discriminate with its eighty percent mortality rate—the highest in modern history with the exception of Ebola. Worse yet, the disease struck quickly, with most patients succumbing within seventy-two hours of the fever's onset.
Of course, at the time, Castle did not know any of that. He merely arrived home late Sunday night to find his mother in bed, her temperature well above one hundred, and his daughter dutifully tending to her, though her complexion grew paler by the hour. Come morning, neither woman was able to move from bed. The writer tried to call for an ambulance, but by that time the hospitals had been restricted on how many patients they could take in. Several hours of phone calls and fifty thousand dollars later he'd procured a private doctor from Philadelphia who hooked his family members up to IV fluids and sadly informed him that nothing could be done; the virus was too new and did not appear to be responding to any treatments.
Later that day, after making sure his mother and Alexis has as much clear chicken broth as they could drink, Castle thought for the first time to call Ryan, thinking the police would have to know more than him. Their conversation was brief and he learned that no, they did not know anything; they were just as confused—and panicked. Many of the female officers had fallen ill, but Montgomery had forced Kate into a make-shift quarantine so she was, to that point, not ill.
Kate.
It stood to reason that only the grave illness of his mother and daughter would push the detective from Castle's mind. Other than the duo of red-heads, she was far and above the most important person in his life—even if she didn't feel the same. The fact that she remained well gave him hope, but unfortunately that feeling didn't last.
The next several days were mostly a blur for Castle. His mother passed sometime overnight on Tuesday, which, while devastating, Castle hardly had an opportunity to process since he threw his entire focus to Alexis in the hopes of keeping her alive. When she made it to Thursday morning and her fever had ticked down to 100.5, he really thought she was in the clear, but that afternoon her breathing became labored, she had a seizure, and took her final breath with his arms still around her.
That moment had been Castle's breaking point. No parent should ever have to bury their child and for him he'd lost both mother and daughter in less than two days. He was certain the physical pain pounding out of his heart and coursing through his body would end his life as well, but it never did. Still, everything was a chore: standing up, taking a step, taking a drink.
For a week straight he went to bed, slept ten hours, not really caring if he woke up, and then he'd get up and move to the couch, where he'd stare blankly off into space for another ten hours. On the rare occasion he did shuffle into the kitchen, he did so out of pure habit, for he knew the emptiness that filled his gut was in no way related to actual hunger.
A week after Alexis's death, when the remains of his loved ones were returned to him in ornate urns (due to the high volume of deaths and the unknown nature of the virus, cremation had been the only available option) Castle attempted to pull himself from his stupor. He showered, went to the corner bodega and retrieved milk and eggs to make himself a proper meal, and then sat down at his laptop. He tried to bring himself to care about his writing work, but couldn't; odds were Gina and Paula would never again nag him for chapters. Instead, he surfed the web, reading progressively more tragic tales of the millions of women that had passed away.
Millions.
That figure was staggering—and talking about New York City alone! Though the bizarre illness seemed mostly isolated in those five cities, the death tolls were still being calculated. Perhaps the only positive news was the report that new outbreaks were almost down to zero. Just as Castle was seriously contemplating cracking open yet another bottle of scotch, a calendar reminder popped up on his computer screen with a chime.
The writer had dozens of them programmed, some months in advance. Mostly they were chapter due date reminders (lord knows he needed those) but some were little anecdotes; comments to get him through the day—to remind him why he did what he did. This reminder was one of those. Truly, it could not have been simpler, but it was just enough kindling to relight the fire within him.
What would Nikki Heat do?
What would Nikki Heat do? Would she wallow in sadness? Play the 'woe is me' game? No, she wouldn't. Nikki Heat would fight. She would fight until she could fight no more. Then, somehow, she would find the strength to pick herself up and keep going.
Given his deep state of grief, this was easier said than done, but day by day he'd grown stronger, his chest felt a little bit lighter. With another few days gone he knew he was ready to venture out into the world—well, his world: the Twelfth.
Other than their phone call at the onset of the outbreak, Castle had only one communication with the team of detectives; a text message from Ryan stating that Jenny had fallen ill and he was taking leave to tend to her. That had been the day before Alexis died, and he had not really thought to contact them since. Now, so much time had passed, he felt he needed to do so in person if for no other reason to offer a hug of condolence.
As he neared the Twelfth, Castle realize just how truly perplexing it was not to see any women on the street. Had he not been acutely aware of the recent devastating virus, he wasn't sure he would have noticed it at first. Many times he had walked down a crowded Manhattan sidewalk completely surrounded by men in business suits—particularly if he was near the financial district—and never took much notice to it. The nonappearance of one gender over another had never before struck his interest; however, since he knew he would not be seeing any women, their absence was palpable.
As he searched for an available parking space outside the precinct building, the writer wondered when he would next see another woman on the streets. Based on all the news he was seeing online and on television, it seemed as though most women were being encouraged to hold up indoors, but now that the outbreak seemed to have dissipated, surely the ones that survived would be out and about. Upsetting as it was, he believed their sightings would be few and far between, and that was certainly not a concept he would easily get used to.
Stepping inside the lobby of the twelfth, Castle wasn't even questioned or stopped by the front desk clerk; the man merely nodded at him and waved him along. Absent were the usual smiled and jokes he received from the vice squad or jabs from robbery as he made his way towards the elevators. Every man he passed was stone faced and Castle couldn't really say that he blamed them.
On the homicide floor the different tone in the atmosphere was most striking. He wasn't greeted by Hastings or Karpowski; he imagined they'd both been stricken and passed weeks earlier. LT did give him a nod, but his usual grin was gone. In fact, Castle feared his trip to the Twelfth might make him sadder instead of more grounded until he neared the bullpen and spotted the male duo with whom he was most familiar. For the first time since the passing of his daughter, a half smile crossed his face and he approached.
"Good to see you." Ryan extended his hand and then pulled the writer into a one armed hug.
"You too." Castle returned. He shook Esposito's hand in turn.
"How's…how are…?" Ryan's voice drifted off at the implied question. Despite the lack of context, Castle understood and even appreciated the vague nature of the comment; there was no need to come right out and ask a question that had a fairly obvious answer.
The writer gave a brief shake of his head. "No. Both of them right after it started."
Both men offered apologies before Ryan added, "Jenny, too, and my sister."
"Feels like everyone," Esposito added. "Oh, ah, except for Lanie—she's still in the hospital, but through the worst of it so they think she'll make it."
"That's great," the writer said genuinely. Sucking in a deep breath he managed the next words without vomiting, which he considered a personal victory. "And Beckett?"
He braced himself for the answer; terrible and heart wrenching as it was, he knew. The last he'd heard, Montgomery forced her into quarantine which, in theory, should have put her in a position to avoid illness, but he also knew his partner quite well. She was not one to sit idly by and shirk her responsibilities—even at the risk of her own safety. She would have been out in the trenches with everyone else and thus he simply assumed she'd, too, fallen ill. He needed to hear it, though; he needed to hear Ryan say the words and then he would start the grieving process all over again—that was, assuming his heart was still made up of pieces large enough to break.
Ryan opened his mouth to respond, but before any words could form, the clicking of heels against the tile hallway floor answered for him. Even if Castle hadn't known about the sudden reduced female population he would have recognized that walk simply from its gate. Terror immediately took hold of him. He'd been so prepared for her illness coming face to face with her was not something he thought he could handle in that moment. Yet, when he turned his head to the left, there she was looking as jaw-droppingly gorgeous as he'd ever seen her, though she looked no different than usual in her white shirt, black blazer, and dark jeans.
"C-Castle?"
Her melodic if not slightly surprised voice hit his ears just as he turned to spot her. Instantly, his breath came out in seizing, choking splutter. He lost all control of his emotions and began weeping just a few feet from the elevator on the homicide floor of the twelfth precinct.
For a solid five seconds she merely stared at him, presumably stunned not just by his presence, but by his violent emotional outburst, but then she sprang into action.
"Castle, oh my god, Castle. Are you-? Here let's…let's go in here."
With his hands covering his face, the writer allowed the detective to guide him towards the breakroom, one of her warm hands resting gently on his mid-back and the other on his shoulder. Before he even realized what was happening she had pushed him towards the couch and, several moments later, thrust a pile of napkins into his lap as she apologized for not finding any tissues.
He spluttered out a thank you before picking up a napkin and blowing his nose in it loudly. Then, he began apologizing as she settled down beside him, their thighs nearly touching. "It's okay," she said soothingly. When he ventured a glance in her direction, she offered a smile. "I'm glad to see you too."
"Oh god, Beckett." He sniffled out. "I'm sorry, I just—I thought you were…"
She placed her hand gently on his bicep. "Oh, no Castle I'm fine; I was never sick. Montgomery forced me into the quarantine he set up, but you know me—I was like a caged animal in there. Only lasted three days before I snuck out. Course Montgomery still wouldn't let me go far, but I've been fine the whole time." She rubbed her hand over his arm before bringing it back to rest in her lap. "I tried to call you a few times last week, but it just kept going right to voicemail, so I wasn't sure if…"
"They're gone," he sniffed out. "Mother and Alexis…"
She nodded tersely as though she had been expecting it, but she returned her hand to his arm, that time giving it more of a squeeze. "I am so sorry. I cannot even imagine what you're going through right now."
"'s not just me," he mumbled out. "So many people…news said the fatality rates are seventy percent…"
"It's more like ninety." She commented, though it was half-under her breath. When his red-rimmed eyes widened, she bobbed her head. "Ninety percent fatality rate with less than one percent being immune all together."
Ninety percent fatality rate—well, as horrifying as that was, it did make him feel ever so slightly better about the passing of his mother and Alexis; they truly had not really had a chance to survive. Yet, the more interesting point was her comment about immunity. Surely if Beckett had, as he assumed, refused her quarantine and helped her colleagues, she would have been exposed, which mean he could only assume she felt into the latter category. "Are you…?"
She bobbed her head. "I don't know for certain, but I think so yeah. I mean, I found one of the vice cops passed out in the bathroom just before Montgomery quarantined me. She ended up dying and I never had so much as a fever, so that's the theory we're operating on."
Reaching for another napkin to blot his cheeks, Castle said without thinking, "I always knew you were one in a million."
Kate laughed and bumped her shoulder against his before saying his name warningly. When he felt her body collide against his, Castle's chest felt lighter than it had in almost a month and a new wave of emotion filtered through his body. Kate was alive—she was okay. The world that had seemed so bleak not fourteen days earlier was suddenly shining with an unexpected light and he realized that hope for the future still remained.
"Well, uh, thanks, but it's definitely too early to know how many people are really immune—or if immunity is really possible. Josh says I'm not allowed to test that theory."
At the mention of Doctor Motorcycle Boy, Castle's chest deflated slightly. Oh. Right. Him. "He's the one that told you about the ninety percent fatality rate?"
Kate nodded. "That's what he believes he's seeing at the hospital. That was, gosh, five days ago, I think?" She shook her head and skimmed her fingertips over her forehead. "He's basically been working non-stop as you can imagine so we haven't really been able to talk."
"Sure. Makes sense."
They sat silently for another minute before Kate skimmed her hand down his arm and gave his fingers a squeeze. "Well, I'm really glad you stopped by to see us, but I should get back to this case—we're pretty shorthanded now that—well, now that over a third of the force is gone."
He sniffed and blotted under his nose with another napkin. "Right of course; I don't want to interrupt you."
She gazed at him, bemused. "Really, Caste? You don't want to interrupt me? Since when?"
Despite himself, he let out a breathy laugh; well she did have him there. "Well, I mean…I don't know what I mean. Sorry." He sighed and dropped his chin to his chest. As much as he wanted things to return to normal, he knew that his normal—sitting in the chair beside Beckett's desk and annoying her even though they both knew she wasn't actually annoyed—would never be normal again. His heart simply wasn't in it, not at that point in the grieving process, anyway.
He was surprised when a moment later he felt her fingers brush across his shoulders and momentarily feather into the hair at the base of his neck. "It's okay, Castle; don't worry about it. You can just…sit by my desk if you want. We don't have to talk."
He lifted his chin and saw she wore an encouraging smile, so what choice did he have but to agree? "Thanks, Beckett; that sounds nice."
Two weeks after his first reappearance at the precinct, Castle sat on the couch, his laptop balanced on his thighs as he tapped away, filling a blank Word document with a scene he'd thought of on the way home from the Twelfth. It wasn't one cohesive with the Nikki and Rook story he was presently writing, but he just hadn't found his footing there—not since everything happened. He struggled enough to write more than a few hundred words at a time that he knew he needed a longer break before trying to formulate a more organized story. For then, he'd be happy with just a scene that actually made sense even if it didn't fit anywhere and was ultimately scrapped.
The more time progressed, the more the world began to reset itself, the more Castle found himself settling into his new version of normal. True, the loft still felt almost painfully empty at times, and at least once a day he was convinced he heard either his mother or his daughter moving on the second floor, but living day to day was getting easier, slowly but surely.
After his first visit back, Castle returned to the Twelfth to visit with his friends and help where he could. There weren't many homicide cases to investigate (mercifully, the shock of the woman-murdering virus had calmed everyone's murderous tendencies—at least temporarily) but Beckett and her team had been tasked to other crimes, like a store robbery and a fire that turned out to be arson.
Very shortly after he, quite thankfully, discovered she was still alive, Kate was finally allowed to leave the precinct after her immunity to the mysterious virus had been confirmed by a blood test. She was, of course, very relieved to be back in her apartment and Castle couldn't say that he blamed her, but he was concerned. When he walked with her to the robbery scene the looks she received from men on the street were downright disturbing. They looked at her like…well, like she was the last woman left on Earth—except worse. They looked at her like she was a big juicy steak and they were starving stray dogs that hadn't eaten in weeks.
Castle knew better than to bring it up. He didn't want to upset her and knew she would respond only with, "I have a gun, Castle; I'm fine," but as the days progressed and the remaining women came out of hiding, reports of assaults and violence began filtering in. As a man who loved women with everything he had, he found the news utterly repugnant, but also knew he could not control the world (sadly) and so his concern for Kate grew, though he had to keep it to himself.
Just as he was contemplating which take-out location he would call for his dinner, the phone resting on the coffee table beside him rang and the lovely detectives imagine appeared on the screen. He smiled, swiped the device's screen to answer the call, and pressed it to his ear. "Beckett…you wouldn't want to share some Chinese with me this evening, would you?"
"Castle."
One word from her was all it took to send his heartrate skyrocketing, he sat up so quickly that his laptop nearly crashed to the floor; he caught it at the last second and shoved it to the coffee table. Pressing the phone almost painfully tight against his ear, he said, "Kate? Is something wrong?"
"I'm sorry to bother you."
"You're never a bother, Beckett. What is it?"
"Could…could you maybe come over to my apartment? Please. If you're not-"
"I'm leaving now," he said, before scrambling from the couch, nearly sliding across the hardwood floor in his haste to retrieve his shoes.
The writer made it to his partner's apartment in record time. (One good thing about their near apocalypse was that the significant drop in Manhattan's population had done wonders for the traffic.) When he found the ME's van parked out front, his chest was gripped with fear and he'd hurried inside past the uniforms guarding the building's entrance. He nearly ran smack into Perlmutter in the lobby, but was, perhaps most alarmingly, not met with the usual amount of sass, merely a terse head nod as he rushed towards the door.
Desperately concerned, Castle went for the elevator, but found it cordoned off with police tape. Cursing beneath his breath, he hurried to the stairs and took them two at a time for the first floor up, but then found himself winded and could only half-jog up the second flight until he reached the hallway outside his partner's apartment. He called out her name, but found her hovering in the doorway of her place, pressing a tea-towel covered bag of ice to her cheekbone already showing the shadow of a bruise.
"Oh god, Beckett!" he proclaimed, his stomach immediately flipping when he saw the cut on her lip and the ruffled nature of her hair. "What happened?"
Her bottom lip began to tremble and she merely shook her head, unable to get the words out. He hooked his right arm around her shoulders, pulling her into him and pressing his lips to the top of her head, quietly promising everything would be ok. After several moments she pulled back and confessed, "I killed him."
He skimmed his finger against her forehead to brush some wayward hairs from her eyes as he asked, "Who? Who did you kill?"
"He—he followed me into the building. I had headphones on…so stupid."
"No, no." He promised, but his heart clenched. God, oh god—his worst fear had come true. Some horrible, disgusting man had seen Beckett and—Jesus, he couldn't even bear the thought.
"He grabbed me by the hair and pushed me into the elevator. His hands were on my throat—I couldn't—couldn't breathe and my gun I…I—I didn't mean to k-kill him." She sniffled and rubbed her left hand beneath her nose.
Castle pulled her into his arms again while shooting a scathing look towards the elevator. "It's okay, Kate. You did what you had to do; you didn't have a choice."
"I-I tried to save him, but there was s-so much blood."
He brushed his lips over her head and cradled her against him even more. God, how horrible. She had taken lives before, of course, but always when she was on duty—always when she had no other option. Obviously, Kate had feared for her life and safety and thus used the only weapon at her disposal. Whether the man had intended to end her life or assault her in some other way (god, he couldn't even bear the thought) she had defended herself accordingly in his eyes and he could only hope the NYPD agreed.
After she'd cried against his chest for several minutes, she slid back and Castle brushed some tears from the bottom edge of her jaw. "Listen, I'm going to stay here with you tonight and then…I know you're not going to like this idea, but maybe you should stay at the loft for a while. Just until-"
"Okay."
"O-oh okay—okay." He stammered out his response. He honestly had expected her to protest and that he'd need to twist her arm into the idea, but he wasn't going to complain that she'd agreed so quickly. It really was for the best. He feared the situation in the city would get worse before it got better, and he if casually shadowed her under the guise of them living together then perhaps she would be less of a target.
After depositing her packet of mostly-melted ice onto the kitchen counter, she returned to his side and leaned her un-damaged cheek against his shoulder. "Thanks for coming, Castle."
He looped his arm around her back. "Always."
A/N: Because I've been doing a lot of alternate endings and I can't help myself, there will be 2 independent "part 2"s to this fic, both branching off from this point.
A/N 2: A bit longer explanation for this bizarre AU - feel free to ignore.
So actually i found this prompt on a non-fandom related fiction site like 10 yrs ago - the "mysterious virus kills 90% of one gender" prompt - and it stuck with me because I always thought it was interesting, if not completely bizarre and so for years I've been kicking it around, trying to figure out how to make it work semi realistically and this is the result so i hope you enjoyed this admittedly very strange AU.