Onward to the events of "Bride". :D A mild spoiler is that Francesca appears in this story, starting with this chapter, the name for obvious reasons. Early on when I started, I knew she had to be a part of the story because how could she not? But it was also a challenge because, in the movie, she was Dan's second love interest in the replacement of Meg. At last, I settled on her being Meg's first real friend in months given her other friends either moved on or simply abandoned her. Plus, I plan to make her a little more useful than she'd been in the movie, so I hope I did.

Just like my last story, the remainder of the chapters is named after certain scenes of the movie, thanks to the DVD. :) And thanks to one of my favorite stories on Livejournal for inspiration for this chapter, "One Last Temptation Before Bedtime" by contre la montre (contains STRONG SEXUAL CONTENT, enough to deserve the X-rating). Plus part five of Lovecraft's story, "The Horror from the Shadows", and Challenge #18 Rainbow from "1001 Ways to Say This" by TheOtherMaddHatter. Inspiration is everywhere.

Chapter Eight

Medics in Peru

Peru, of course, had been Meg's first initial thought when she and Herbert first touched down in a private airplane which brought them to the deepest part of the selva – or rainforest – high in the mountains. The sun had beaten down on them the whole time they were escorted to the military camp of assignment, gunfire already heard. First day of arrival and they'd already been shoved frantically into the chaos. But that was why she and Herbert were here, had been here for the last eight months.

A whole year had passed since the Miskatonic Massacre, and today she had purposefully been avoiding that topic. But being a volunteer doctor in a civil war and the associate and assistant of Herbert West did not help it at all any more than the aftermath which was the Arkham typhoid in the three months that followed. She would have been dead then if Herbert had not given her the inoculation as well as himself if they had not finally come in the next day. She had gotten used to the company of Herbert if she wasn't always happy; not that she had been in months. How could she be?

But Herbert needed someone to keep him in check with reality, so there she was all this time. But nothing changed for the better. He had picked a place blood-ridden with a civil war of all places. Here she was, ten thousand miles away from Miskatonic Medical in Arkham, in the backwoods of South America. Herbert had picked this – in her mind, symbolically and ironically – because of the constant numbers of soldiers who died for their country only to be brought back and put in more pain than ever before. No thanks to a certain life-giving, glowing green concoction.

Herbert himself was getting harder in nature than ever before each day that passed while they tended to the wounded and dying. He was getting more and more addicted to his experiments that would make another person who wasn't Meg drop dead from fright and disgust.

The upside was that she'd made a friend in the duration of her time in Peru. The first real friend she'd had in so many months, given that some of her friends had either transferred to other schools to get away from the "disease-ridden town" or because of how they discovered that she'd "joined" Herbert West. Francesca Danelli, an Italian investigative journalist who had been born in Florence but grew up in Argentina, whom she met not too long after arriving with Herbert, but the hostility between her and West was already ineluctable at first sight. No surprise there. Herbert liked no one, and she meant no one. It had been that way when they first met. Some things never change.

Meg still couldn't piece together why Herbert hated people so much, as he'd hated her when they first met. Why he was shunned and why he cared only for his research and nothing else normal human beings did. But he DOES care about you, in a way, her inner self said soothingly. He tended to you when you were sick, remember? He's been there for you if not in the same way you're used to.

She and Herbert shared a tent, given that, for her own insecure reasons, she could not and would not be comfortable sharing one with a total stranger, and Francesca preferred to stay as far away from Herbert as possible. Meg had a habit of sleeping half-naked at night – tank top and her underwear – given the humidity at night mingled with the dropping temperature compared to the heavy rainfalls and high temperatures during the day. Things were quiet that day, for now, until there would be bombs, cannons, and guns bursting here and there, and she and Herbert would be called to assist with the wounded and dead men fighting for their country. Civil war, after all.

She'd taken a bath in the river that morning, which also became an end-of-the-day routine. The river was cool, refreshing, and replenishing on her skin, finished with the aguaymanto fruit for radiance, tone, and texture, keeping herself in shape like the lady she was. Each time she did this since arrival, making sure none of the soldiers would ever come across her...but there were times she could feel eyes on her even when they were hidden well. Herbert didn't sleep, so he would be up for hours on end. Not that she minded; she had nothing to hide from him, after all.

Right now, after three days of all work and no sleep, Meg finally found the chance to lie down and catch up on sleep. Herbert would probably be off doing what he did best when he didn't need her for a while. Leaving him to do his business alone worried her sometimes, as someday his good luck could run out and have him killed by one of his own experiments. Not to mention attempting to test a newer, wilder idea of his that she had never considered before or anyone else in life that she knew of, which was the usage of a very rare tropical reptile he'd found one day while on one of his hikes in the jungle for plant samples that he could attempt to marry with his re-agent ingredients.

~o~

"Dan?" Her eyes opened slowly, blinking in confusion as her senses came to; there was no possibility of denying the familiar heat of a body – and bare flesh – over hers. The wash of hot breath over her face made her giggle as little waves tickled her cheek, followed by a tender, enlightening kiss there. "Dan...stop..."

"You love it when I do this..." Oh, God, to hear his voice again...and then all reason brought the very question from her lips.

"How...I thought you were..." He was here...he was here, and she couldn't believe it.

"I couldn't stay dead," he said as he brought his hand up and pushed the broad strap of her tank down, exposing her shoulder for the kiss and nibble he placed there. "What's dead shouldn't stay dead, my love."

She squeaked in delight as she finally got to feel his teeth and lips on her skin for the first time in FOREVER...it brought forth the desires that he and only he had brought out of her...he was her first and only who could make her feel this way. "Ahh, Dan..." She rolled onto her back and looked up at him, batting her eyelashes suggestively. "Let's pick up where we left off." Those weren't the best words to leave her mouth, but they sure were enough to make him grin down at her and swoop down to capture her lips with his, her hands coming up to entangle in his soft brown hair, while one of his own moved down south and began to work on the button of her cargo pants. "Dan..."

~o~

Meg looked very peaceful when she slept; this was one of the few things Herbert admired about her. Peace was a thing he'd often disturbed in the dead upon instilling the ooze of life into the brain – a theory which he had begun to expand, thanks to Dr. Hill, the only thing he would ever thank the man for. Consciousness resided in more parts of the body, not just in the brain. He couldn't wait to show Meg this, but he doubted she would go along with this. She would get over it, eventually, and get on board as she always would.

Their times together – their nights of passion and rough sex – were very few due to the incoming supply of dead and dying soldiers, but each time got better, and Herbert was becoming more and more addicted to her as it progressed. She'd shown him that he didn't need to rely on his re-agent for pleasure, but a few times he had to keep himself injected so his brain cells were still functional. If he lost one dose, so much as missed one, he would go before he could blink. Meg had still been telling him to stop taking it because it was meant for a dead body and not a living person; that had been his purpose, after all. But at the same time, if he hadn't been shooting up, he would have been dead in the morgue thanks to the intestines of Dr. Carl Hill.

It had been just her and him, together, since then, in a whole year of nights of experiments, going over notes, arguments, but eventually exhilarating ardor whether in the lab which currently was a tent like any other in the mountain region of their surroundings – assigned to him on his plea that he was devising new and radical methods for surgery on the patients – in the cot serving as their bed or somewhere against a tree in the jungle; one exciting time was on the earthy ground in which the rich smell was washed onto Megan's skin. But in spite of it all, while he would not tell her outright, he knew one obvious thing: she has not gotten over Daniel.

That was the last straw beginning now, as Herbert sat on his thighs, his legs spread out on his side and drawn together as he watched her sleep on the cot in their shared tent. She was on her side, facing him, one arm tucked under her head while the other draped over her abdomen, her hair coming undone and some strands spilling over her face. She had been letting her hair grow longer, choosing most of the time to keep it up and behind her head for no distractions. She was becoming...lovelier. Radiant. A vision...

Before he knew what he was doing, since half of him did not want to disturb her from an apparent good dream she was having, Herbert found himself running the silken petals of the red hibiscus flower he'd plucked from outside out of a habit, running it down along the bare skin of her arm, glowing ivory in the late sun. At the light contact, she moaned sweetly and rolled onto her back, stretching her arms, her breasts heaving upward under her tank so that the pendant she always wore slid in the valley between her breasts. He never paid much attention to it before, this token from her mother as she'd told him once. That delicate floral motif was suspended with a dark jewel drop in the shape of a tear. He didn't know how to judge it any other way.

And then he heard her murmur that very name: "Dan..."

He cursed under his breath. She was dreaming again of Dan. He would often hear her wake and screaming, and would always run to her side. But this time was different. It was a good dream...a dream where she was at peace. Not that he didn't appreciate her not waking and screaming again, but the fact that she still dreamed of Dan made him a little jealous. He wanted her to move on; she couldn't spend the rest of her days in the past. He wondered if she still blamed him for her lover's death even though they didn't bring it up often.

Herbert felt like he was but the third wheel. He'd given her everything from genius, originality, genuine support, and loyalty...and could love ever be added? He had no idea if she could ever feel this way for him – or was it possible? Herbert had never said the word before, not in a long time, so to finally admit it made it possible indeed.

He was beginning to love Meg.

He could feel it in his veins, brought up in a surge faster and stronger than any shooting of the re-agent and his new path of the exotic red flower in his hand, now gracing the curves of her breasts.

Her eyes snapped open then, spotting him right away, and she sat up right away. Herbert pulled his hand away. Meg backed away only by less than a few inches. "What's that for?" She sounded neither angry nor frustrated, just mildly confused.

"A mere habit, I suppose," Herbert answered, unsure of how to explain his true feelings. "I enjoy the pleasure of watching you sleep."

"Yeah, it was good...but I had to wake up." She pouted, which he found quite amusing. "I'm feeling like..." Meg paused to look down at her clothed crotch area, motioning it briefly with her hand. Herbert looked down there with both eyebrows raised. The dream aroused her, he thought. She wants me to pleasure her; she knows she can't fix this herself. "It's been a while since we..."

Her unable to finish the sentence amused and aroused him, too. He knew just what to do. "Well, let the good doctor make you better then." He dropped the flower to the ground and moved down, making himself room in the space between her legs. "It has been a while since we had some time away from the mess." She tensed but didn't change spots.

"What are you doing?" Meg asked, suspicion laced in her voice.

He tsked. "Megan Halsey, it's been a while since we've done this. Let me do the work and make you feel good." He reached to undo the button of her cargo pants and then the zipper with the same fingers in only two seconds. "It'll be a first for me."

Meg made a face. "But that doesn't mean I'm ready for this on you."

"And you don't have to be," he assured her. "Whenever you are as ready as I am."

"And how have you managed to relieve yourself without me doing it for you?" she challenged. Herbert flinched as he knew she was referring to masturbation. Which is what I still refuse to sink low to. Meg telling him it was normal for everyone else still was not convincing, either. "You might, everyone else might, but not I," he'd told her, and she'd stopped talking altogether.

Megan said no more as she lifted her hips to show her readiness and allowed him to pull both her pants and undergarments down to expose all of her to him and the open air around them. He smiled broadly and began to do his work with precision to rekindle the fire of love in his partner, kissing that spot and running his hands over her thighs and her clothed abdomen until he grasped both her breasts. Meg whimpered as he began to play with her nipples beneath her bra. She sucked in a breath of surprise and moaned when he snaked his tongue out and found the slit in the front, not yet going through but enough to excite her.

"Loving this already? Excellent, Dr. Halsey." He drawled her name, which made her vocally shudder, a malicious, triumphant grin evident at her weak nod. He angled his head so that he found direct access to her clitoris, already getting a taste of hot how and wet she was, sweet and moist on his lips and entering his mouth. She tasted amazing; he never knew it would be this wondrous. He gently grazed his teeth over the swollen flesh, the texture of her blonde pubic hairs tickling his nose, emitting a squeak and a cry of pleasure from her. Herbert looked up to see Meg arching her back, head tilted backward, as she savored the feel of someone's mouth on her womanhood for the first time in a long time. Dr. Hill certainly couldn't give her this sort of pleasure. She didn't like it, but now she was liking Herbert West doing every bit of it just the way she liked it.

Meg let out a scream, followed by his name from her lips, when she finally let go, her vaginal muscles contracting and spilling more of her nectar out for him to drink down until there was nothing left. She lay there for some moments until the waves of her orgasm subsided, and Herbert had taken every last drop down his throat, licking his lips as he looked up at her, seeing her face and cleavage shining with sweat from both the heat and humidity of the jungle seeping through this tent and him making love to her sex. "Was it worth it?"

She opened her mouth to speak when there was a voice calling for them. "Dr. West! Dr. Halsey! We are under attack!"

"Shit." Meg bolted upwards and fixed her clothing back into place. "Duty calls." She quickly bolted up and out of the bed for the entrance. Herbert watched her go, feeling disappointed.

"You're right. You're absolutely right."

~o~

The air of their workplace smelled hideously and mucilaginously with bodily odors and fluids, and blood – both dead and alive at the same time. Outside, there were the sounds of the battlefield – guns, shouting, and bombing everywhere. After not much activity the whole day, today had only gotten worse and was proceeding into the night. The victims of it all were subdued with the right amount of morphine Meg could give them as they were running out of supplies. However, a little over half of them weren't so lucky and sporting gunshot wounds to the head which hadn't been acquired in the bout. The latter details were at the hands of the man whom she had finally found some "spare" time with after weeks of limitation.

This was where she could finally bring in the previously mentioned reptile; it was known as the Cuzco iguana, a creature of the rainforest you don't see around the world often. Its albumin – one of the blood's most common proteins in all species – was being used in the formula. The time now for the effects to take extended from seconds to minutes. The problems were that, despite having access, the maimed soldiers were so torn apart and their insides pierced that they didn't last longer than their predecessors. A whole body like the ones back at Miskatonic was harder to obtain. Meg felt the failure of keeping any of these men alive put too much weight on her shoulders, and knowing Herbert, he loathed failure but would always see the brighter side of another chance despite the obvious results.

Her cheeks were still flushed from the lingering heat from earlier, and from the relief Herbert had given her from her dream...with his mouth, heated and moist desire when they hadn't done it in weeks, and with his mouth of all things. Dan had done it to her before, but the way Herbert would graze his teeth in a way that threatened to bite down on her and add mild pain which was followed by pleasure...

She forced herself back into focus with the current wounded man on the operating table between herself and Herbert, both of them currently in lab coats and medical gear. He was covered in gore, moaning in never-ending agony – and had a metal piece in his chest, notably into the right pectoral muscle. She was doing her best to swipe the gore away and add hydrogen peroxide, whereas Herbert was grabbing the scissors to cut away the last of the torn shreds of the man's shirt to make it easier to...remove the piece. Meg stopped him with a hand on that wrist holding the scissors and warned, "Herbert, it'll burst an artery."

"Meg –" His voice booked no room for a debate. "– if we don't remove this now, he's going to go into cardiac arrest, I assure you of that. Just be ready to clamp."

"But what if it doesn't hold?" There was a half-and-half possibility to a large one that the man would lose more blood and possibly die from the loss, or the botched removal of the plate could kill him right away if not that.

Herbert's head jerked back up to her, eyes blazing with determination. "We. Have. No. Choice. Meg." He punctured each word with great speed at the same time. Meg sighed and shook her head, picking up her own pair of pliers, counting to three with him, and then applying pressure in lifting the piece from the poor man, whose screams echoed into her eardrums at the same time as the next round of bombs in the distance, outside their tent.

She hissed when the already red-stained white of her coat was splattered with yet another long, thick spurt of gore from the wound, as she'd predicted. "Jesus Christ! It didn't hold." Herbert's application of white tissues didn't stop it, and by that time the man's cries had ceased altogether. Meg didn't have to see him check the pulse and find none, knowing the soul was already gone, as she turned away and found herself facing one of the supporting poles for the tent serving as their private lab and medical care. She felt her body fall forward and give way beneath her, but she clutched onto it as though holding onto it for dear life. Herbert's words didn't help the distress she was feeling, either.

"His central nervous system is still intact. He could still prove to be useful, more useful than he'd be otherwise." Meg's body was wracked with the heavy breaths she took to try to calm herself down and failed. Another warrior for the country lost, and a new subject for the re-agent. She didn't feel like witnessing another man who lost his life, giving it for the good of others, only to be brought back in greater pain than before.

Look how far we've fallen…I've fallen. She paid no mind to her surroundings, slumping to her knees and removing her coat to get the horrid smell off of her when it would only grow stronger and never leave.

And then, amid the shouts and firings outside, another voice had entered the tent – a voice that she was only partly more than happy to hear, but couldn't find it in her to raise her body yet. "We have to retreat!" Francesca called out, having clamored herself amidst the bustling and shootings to break the word. "The front lines have weakened!"

Vicious growling finally brought Meg out of her daze. She whipped around to see Herbert in a bit of a conflict with the newly "revived" man they'd lost only moments ago. More and more lately, the subjects had become a little less of a fight but still aggressive as ever…only to be finished off with a revolver, as Herbert did just now, ultimately ending his latest failure. Meg bolted up then, the adrenaline in her rushing through her system. "God damn it, Herbert, what are you doing?!" Francesca could very well hear this and assume something.

But he continued what he did best – snap off his bloodied latex gloves and grab his notebook and hastily scribble down the notes in it. "You know very well what I'm doing, Meg," he answered as if it were obvious. "We have limited time here, and we'll never again have access to this volume of fresh subject specimens."

Something knocked them both down, both the wind and another bomb, hitting a spot just barely feet away from them, making them both nearly fall to the ground – and making one of the curtains that shielded them from the outside fall away to reveal Francesca, equally knocked down from the impact of the warzone and amid the caged iguanas that hissed warningly.

Less than pleased, Herbert picked up his pistol. "What do you want?" he demanded. "Get away from those!"

"What are you doing back here?" Francesca returned hotly, unintimidated by the rise of the gun in the bespectacled man's hand, along with his order that she leave. The spectacle itself was laughable but infuriating at the same time. Meg got in the middle and shoved the weapon, still in Herbert's hand, down to his side.

"Put that thing away and let's get out of here," she said. "This is too dangerous for all of us." Francesca seconded this with a brusque nod, but Herbert wasn't willing to compromise.

"Meg, what are you talking about? We have a lot of work to do here." He gestured around them.

Francesca threw her hands up in frustration, just about giving up and needing to save her skin without having to wait for either of them. "Come on, you two! Jesus Christ," she hissed, turning and retreating away from them.

She's right…this is too dangerous. The longer we stay here, the worse. Meg started to follow her, but Herbert's hand on her arm stopped her. "Meg, she's wrong!" He forced her around to face him. She didn't like him this way right now; just some hours earlier, he was giving her immense pleasure and now they were back to the "bickering couple" stage. She wanted to laugh at that, but Herbert going on about his latest idea added only to the fire burning inside her nerves.

"Listen we are close. Reticular consciousness is not just in the brain, we know that, yes? We've gone beyond that." He turned behind him to pick up one of the green lizards and held it out to her. The black eyes stared unblinkingly up at her. "Look at this. These reptiles are the key."

Meg regarded the creature with tight lips and a hard expression. Gentler traveling of the re-agent in the system, a longer time to course through the system, but the variable hasn't changed. And Herbert seemed to sense this. Putting the iguana down, he said in utter exasperation, "Oh, you still don't understand, do you? This is no longer about just…re-animating the dead."

A cold chill ran up her spine at his last words: "We will create new life."

As far as she knew about reptiles and regeneration after losing parts, there was no doubt what he was thinking about with the uses of these things for the experiments…

The next blow sent them both off their feet. The enemy was getting closer. "Hurry, let's go!" Herbert shouted as he scrambled about the area, grabbing his notes and as much of the equipment as he could – and the same reptile he'd held out to her. "We'll need this back home!"

It was a good thing Meg had grabbed a hold of him and whirled him around to get them both out of here alive when the first of the enemy Peruvian soldiers burst in through the back, rifle out and firing at them, shouting a phrase in Spanish, but Meg didn't speak much of the language other than the smaller basics, such as hola meaning "hello" as one of them. She was thrown aside by Herbert, who was then pounced on by the intruder and began to yell for her assistance.

Lying on one of the shelves beside her was just the weapon she needed: a machete in its case and all. She withdrew it and charged Herbert's assailant, the gleaming blade raised. It met its target before the man could finish Herbert off where he lay on the ground – the vulnerable, exposed area of the neck. Even that didn't stop him from striking his own blow to her side, just barely missing her abdomen and bringing out one of the sharpest bursts of pain she'd ever experienced. Meg cried out and fell to her side just as the dead man himself collapsed from the fatal machete blow to his neck.

While she suffered from the numbing throbbing in her side, though trying her best not to panic, Herbert took advantage of the situation and took up his position behind the operating table just as more enemy Peruvians burst in and armed, but they were no match for Herbert West's unrelenting firing and emptying all six chambers of the revolver – one for each man – until it was safe for him to jump out from behind his "defense line" and rush to her side. He carefully removed her hand, seeing the dark stain of her injury but giving no sign that it was as fatal as the deadly blade she'd killed the man who attacked him. Or maybe it was fatal, but he had confidence in himself that he would save her life. "Meg…ahh, you're going to be all right," he assured her tenderly, slinging his back with the saved tools and scooping her up into his arms, carrying her the same way he did when she fell sick in the morgue, after the failed re-animation of Dr. Harrod, just as the fires were beginning to consume the tent, and smoke was beginning to cloud their visions.

"Come on, Meg...let's go home."

So Herbie's falling for Meg. :D But that leaves us wondering if she DOES feel the same for him and if she'll ever find it in her to move on from her lost love. Also, thanks to part three, "Six Shots by Moonlight." Lovecraft does have amazing figures of speech and details even though it is nearly impossible to translate.

You know what they say about rough sex: crazy, but better. ;D I've never had it before, but that's what I read. Also, the thing with Herbert and the red flower on Meg's skin came from one of my favorite parts of one of my favorite movies, "Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love".