In death, he dreamed.

He didn't recall the beginning of this dream. The last thing he vaguely remembered was drifting off in Michael Emerson's home. He remembered sharp, smooth bone. Agony that ebbed to something soft and serene, and then nothing. He couldn't call it bliss, exactly. It wasn't peace or contentment, or even discontentment for that matter. It just…was.

But that was only a distant memory as he wandered through unfamiliar scenery. He was in a forest—an unremarkable forest that could have been anywhere in the world, or perhaps nowhere in the world at all. The forest itself was nothing special, but there was something else about this place that felt…unearthly. It was dawn, he thought, but without any trace of sunlight to be seen. He couldn't see the sky but the air was a shade of pale blue and grey, much lighter than he normally would be comfortable with. So light that it could have been high noon on a cloudy day. There was no fog; the ambient air was clear as glass, and quiet as death.

David breathed in the air and smelled nothing. He kept walking.

Later—he couldn't know exactly how long he'd been wandering aimlessly, as there was no time in this dream of his—the trees eventually disappeared and gave way to an endless wave of bluffs overlooking a dark ocean. The sky was grey, but the grass was an electric green.

David saw a familiar figure in the distance, looking out into the water. He approached until he was only within an arm's reach and then tilted his head slightly, properly thinking for the first time since arriving here. He had seen no animals in this place, no insects. Even the wind seemed absent except for out here, by the ocean. Speaking into the air after all this time felt like slicing through the peaceful silent with an axe. He nearly scared himself with the sudden sound of his own voice. "Brother."

Marko—or at least the visage that looked like Marko from behind—didn't immediately look at him. His long, curly hair blew lightly in the wind. "Do you remember ever seeing it for yourself? The sun." He sounded like Marko when he spoke, and when he turned to look at David, he looked completely identical to him, too. His pretty features looked soft, perfectly content, and he smiled.

It was him, David realized. It was too perfect to be anything else. Perhaps he wasn't here, exactly, but the image and demeanor of his deceased brother was real enough. David looked at him lovingly. "No," he responded, "but the millions of paintings and pictures are enough for me."

Marko hummed and faced the ocean again. "They're kind of underwhelming."

David didn't take his eyes off of him. "Where are the others?" There was no clear response to that—only a slight tilt to his brother's head that could have meant anything. "Marko." Marko met his eyes again and David suddenly felt a sense of urgency, like there was somewhere they needed to go. Somewhere they needed to be, far away from…wherever this was. "We should go. The sun will be out any minute."

"Go where?"

David didn't understand why Marko seemed unconcerned with their situation. "Somewhere safer."

"This doesn't feel safe to you?"

"Not anymore." It felt like the longer they stayed here, the worse off they would be.

Marko cast his eyes downward and then looked into the water once more. He seemed consistently drawn to it. David supposed he would be too, before. Before this nagging sensation hit him, this adrenaline. "I'd like to stay here longer."

"Marko." David didn't beg for anything—not even his brothers' lives—but he wasn't above asking nicely from time to time. "Let's just go."

"You go, David," Marko said calmly. There was no sun yet, but the sky was becoming alarmingly bright.

He furrowed his brows in confusion. "What?" The sky turned white and David squinted and ducked his head against the harsh light. He reached for his brother but only met air.

"If you have to go, then go."

. . . .

David came back to reality slowly, sense by sense. He gathered as much information about his situation as he could without opening his eyes, without breathing or even twitching. He had to be sure that his status of being alive wasn't dependent on anyone in his immediate vicinity thinking he was dead.

It took a moment to decide on his orientation, but he concluded that he was laying down and no longer propped up by antlers. He then listened very closely for a long while—listened for vibrations in the air, for any minuscule sounds. There was no breathing, no talking, no footsteps. The air was completely silent, which meant he was alone.

David breathed, and immediately went into a coughing fit. The air was stale and smelled of nothing but wood, compost, and dead vampire. He crinkled his nose in distaste once the coughing stopped.

He finally opened his eyes. It was as dark as could be, so he allowed his vision to shift to something that didn't depend on light. It was the vision that allowed them to hunt and live in the dark, a sight lacking in detail but not in shapes or movements. He could see that he was enclosed in a box. He lifted his stiff, cramped arms to feel the material. Wood. So he was in a…coffin? He couldn't imagine what else it could be, but his enemies still occasionally surprise him, so perhaps it was something else.

He would assume it was a coffin, though, and that the smell of compost indicated he was six feet under. Things just kept getting better and better, didn't they?

Two smacks to the lid above him confirmed that it was cheap, thin wood; a stream of dirt slowly poured onto his chest from the crack he had just made.

This wouldn't be pleasant, so he would try to make it fast. He closed his eyes and then punched the wood with no small effort. A large amount of dirt fell onto his chest and neck, and he used this new gap in the ground to push away the wood he had punched out. He punched and kicked out the rest of the lid in the same fashion, and then realized that that step took way too much out of him. He was a lot weaker than he originally thought.

He struggled through the dirt, clawing his way out toward the surface. Had he been at full strength, he could have karate-kicked that lid into next week and been dusting his hands off above ground within seconds. This, however, took a while. He felt exhausted, and had to muster an extra surge of energy to finally breach through the final layer and painfully pull himself out of the ground.

He laid there for a moment, panting and filthy.

David picked himself up off the ground. He needed to hunt. He needed to feed, and then figure out what the hell to do next.

. . . .

David gorged himself at the beach, draining three humans and even taking one with him as an on-the-go snack. It was knocked out and draped over David's shoulder as he flew to the first place he was naturally drawn to retreat to. He felt stronger but nowhere close to full strength yet. Hopefully his to-go meal would help a bit with that.

The sunken hotel that he and his brothers once called home was in complete disarray when he arrived. For a split second he tensed, ready to discover that someone else had taken root in this place. But he was still alone, aside from the passed-out male on his shoulder. He remembered that they had trashed their home following Marko's death. David and Dwayne had gone on something akin to a rampage, breaking and throwing everything in sight, while Paul sat hunched over their brother's body, completely inconsolable. It had easily been the worst moment of David's life—or he at least thought it couldn't have gotten any worse. It did.

He tied up the man so he wouldn't try to do anything stupid once he woke up, like attempt to run away. That would just be a nuisance, and David wanted to conserve his energy.

All of their things were still here, albeit strewn all over the place. David picked up pieces of his spare clothes and changed out of the dirt-covered, death-stenched clothing he was wearing, then stepped outside to wash his hair, hands and face in the ocean.

When he returned, his meal was awake. The human was struggling against his restraints, his panic breaking him out of the doped-up high he had been on when David found him. He struggled harder when he saw the pale vampire approaching.

David kneeled down in front of where he was tied to an old support beam. "Oh my God, please, please don't hurt me please," he began with the typical sobbing. "Just let me go and I'll keep my mouth shut, I swear."

David's voice was calm and soothing. "Take it easy, pal." The human shook with fear. David's icy blue eyes leveled with his prey's petrified hazel ones. "What's your name?"

"Eugene…"

"My name's David. What's the date today, Eugene?"

"Huh?"

"The date," he repeated without frustration. "And the year."

"Uh…Fri-d-day, J-June, uh…23rd or…24th, I think—I don't r-remember exactly—"

"It's all right," he assured him. "The year?"

Eugene looked at him strangely but complied. "1988?"

A year, then. He was underground for nearly a full year.

"Please let me go," he begged again. David merely stood and walked off.

"Stay right there," he called back with mild amusement.

He found the bejeweled bottle of blood—empty, save for a few drops. He recalled then that Michael had drained the whole thing. That had been a waste, hadn't it?

David hadn't felt this weak in a long, long time. His vulnerability drove him to reach out to the only thing that could bring him comfort, that could bring him some sense of security and direction—the link between himself and his brothers, even Max. Of course that link didn't exist anymore. Not fractured but rather missing completely, as if it never existed at all. It ached deep in his bones like the worst phantom pain, like someone had forcibly ripped a part of his soul and left him to bleed.

He set the bottle down with forced care and stalked off, leaving the main room of the hotel in favor of looking for his brother's body.

Looking was a loose term, of course, because Marko—like everything else in the hotel—was exactly where they left him. Laying atop a large wooden table in one of the nicest, most intact rooms in the hotel, with a silk sheet draped over the body. They'd been too shaken to think of doing anything else at that time. They probably would have dealt with it later, after coming back from enacting their revenge.

David approached warily, a bit irked by how generally unchanged everything was. But upon coming to stand directly over his brother and looking more closely, he could see the signs of time. Layers of dust. New cobwebs.

David forced himself to lift the sheet from Marko's body. He had to see what had become of his family. He had to see what he'd been unable to prevent.

The silk slid to the ground and he felt like someone was grabbing him by the throat. He'd expected a decayed, rotten corpse, perhaps a skeleton. But Marko was fully intact, too intact. His ashen skin and lack of…well, lack of existence…was the only indication that he was actually dead. Dead for a year, in fact.

Impossible.

He barely registered leaving. Half a minute later, David returned to the room once more with a shaking Eugene in tow.

"Oh my God is that a dead body?" David ignored him. He had the human's arm in a vice grip and dragged him towards the table.

"Oh come on, man, what the hell is this?"

David pushed Eugene's head forward, held him there. A stream of the same pleas as earlier escaped his mouth. "Shhh," David soothed, and Eugene's words trailed off into a whimper. "You're gonna help me, Eugene." He said it like it was a promise. Really, it felt like a Hail Mary.

"No, please, I don't—"

"Try to keep it together," David patronized, fist tightening in the human's hair. "This will only pinch."

David bled the human into his brother's mouth slowly, careful not to waste any of the blood. The fight eventually left the human, and David continued to hold him up, hold him steady.

When his heart gave out, David allowed the body to flop onto the ground like a heavy sack of potatoes. He looked down at his brother, eyes searching desperately for any signs that his little sacrifice had worked. Last year he would have had no reason to even think of attempting this. There was no reason it should work. There was also no logical reason that David had been able to crawl out of the dirt earlier that night, so all bets were off.

He waited.

Nothing.

"Okay," he muttered, pulling the right sleeve of his jacket a few inches above his glove. "You picky bastard, you can have mine." His lips quirked into an almost-smile. He felt so desperate he could cry, God forbid. Before letting that happen, he bit into his arm and held it above his brother's mouth. The wound dripped steadily at first but not for long; it healed and he bit into himself again and again. The longer he bled, the slower he healed, and the more he could feel his remaining strength drain away.

"Come on…" He tore deeper, bled heavily this time. That wound, too, healed, and David had nothing left to spare.

He sunk to the floor, turning so that his back was against one of the table legs. His breath came out in quiet pants. "I'm all out." He closed his eyes. "I can't give any more." Absently, he wondered if he was still talking to Marko's body. He didn't believe in an afterlife—nor did he actively disbelieve in one—but he was certain that if something was watching over the world, it most certainly wouldn't help him.

He didn't know what to do, or what to look towards. He had nothing. He'd lost everything.

After resting for a moment, he slowly pulled himself back up, peering over his brother with naïve hope. Unsurprisingly, nothing was going to cut him a break. Nothing would bring any of his brothers back. Marko wasn't going to suddenly sit up on the table. That wasn't his reality.

David gazed down at his brother in anguish, feeling suffocated with remorse. There was something deeply disturbing about seeing Marko's body, seeing the empty shell that really wasn't him anymore, and David had the sudden, insane urge to laugh at all of this. They took lives so easily because life did not exist without death. David didn't fear death—yet he was so selfish that when It came knocking on their doorstep and took someone from him, he had become blinded by the promise of revenge and led the rest of his family to their deaths. They were sloppy bursting in there, guns blazing. They should never have been there.

He reached out to touch his brother, then—a gentle comfort for himself, perhaps. That's why he stopped himself and lowered his hand. He'd always restrained from showing Marko any affection before, for somewhat complicated reasons; he wasn't allowed to show it now. He didn't get to be sorry for all the things that were, the things that should've been, the things that never would be. He'd never be able to make it up to any of them. Never.

He should still be in the ground. Whywas he even here? He died, didn't he? Did Michael miss and send him into a sort of comatose state while he slowly healed? Was it Michael who buried him? Or was it Max? He knew that Max was dead, but had he been killed that same night or did it happen later? Were Dwayne and Paul buried as well? Why didn't Marko look like a monster out of Thriller? David was too drained to make sense of it all.

He used the edges to guide himself around the table, feeling painfully weak. There was a space on the other side of his brother, a dust-free area from where the sheet had been draped. He didn't know what he was thinking, just that he was weak and lost, like a man stranded at sea and at the mercy of forces larger than himself. David laid on his back in that space, inches from Marko's body, and looked up at the dark, vaulted ceiling. Here, he could allow himself a twisted sense of comfort from being near one of his brothers. Here, he could pretend he was drifting away.

David allowed himself to rest and, eventually, relax. A cool, haunting sensation seeped its way forward from the back of his mind. It was like a light flickering on in a vast, dark room. He relished the familiar feeling, even if he was imagining it.

Marko's gasp startled him so harshly that his soul almost ascended from his body.

The smaller not-dead vampire sat up abruptly, coughing, and David was quick to sit up with him. He was stunned silent for a moment. Marko's breathing came out as more gasps. It was like music to his ears.

David watched him closely, and unconsciously leaned towards him. "Easy, Marko." When Marko's eyes met his, they were wide and questioning. Confused. A bit fearful. David smiled with pure relief.

Marko's breaths quickly became more even and relaxed, but when he spoke, his voice was filled with trepidation.

"What happened?"