A/N: Hello, all! Hope the fandom is still somewhat alive and kicking (or even undead and kicking, whatever works). Based on the dates of some of these other stories, I'd say it probably is. Anyways, I just recently watched the Re-Animator and Bride of the Re-Animator for the first time and was instantly obsessed. Decided to write up this idea and share it with all of you. Could be rated M for dark content, but isn't that kind of the point? I was in a real bad mood and the ending just kinda came out that way. MENTIONS OF SUICIDAL THOUGHTS TOWARDS THE END. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK, YE HAVE BEEN WARNED. If you're inclined to leave a review, let me know what you thought!
No beta, all mistakes are mine. Disclaimer: Definitely not mine. There wouldn't be nearly as many plot holes if I owned it. Also, there would be more content for sure.
Daniel Cain stood dully in the hallway, thoughts creeping sluggishly through his mind. He hadn't slept for the better part of two days and had been on grueling duty for most of that time in the hospital. One of the other doctors was rattling on to a group of eager, bright-eyed interns looking hopefully toward their future in medicine. They were standing before the morgue door, and Dan was deliberately not looking at the door. Too much had happened in that room for him to ever be comfortable around it again.
From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a flash of blond hair and turned toward it impulsively. Gone now, if it had ever been there in the first place. He glanced back up to the morgue door and froze in shock. It was the basement door in his house. Dark wood, dusty, and cobwebbed near the top. He could even smell it; dried wood with the slightest touch of mildew, springy and soft.
"Dr. Cain?"
Dan flinched and looked to his left where a young medical intern was standing, looking startled.
"Is something wrong?"
Dan looked back at the morgue door and saw only smooth, cold steel. Blink. The basement door. Blink. The morgue. Blink. The basement door.
With a visible effort, Dan wrenched his gaze away and forced himself to smile at the alarmed intern.
"No, there's nothing wrong," he replied in a voice that was steadier than he felt.
"You know what they say about the morgue," the attending physician said loudly to break up the tension. "Everyone's dying to get in."
The students all laughed. Dan closed his eyes and wished to God he could sleep.
The rest of the day passed without incident, and he returned to the house near the cemetery. Dan plodded through the halls of his home, half-asleep. His legs were sore and his head pounded. God, even his eyes hurt. He blinked owlishly at his own clean kitchen. What had he come in here for? Couldn't remember now.
The room tilted and Dan stumbled sideways into the wall, closed his eyes. His heart hammered so hard it hurt, and he wondered incoherently if this would be the time it finally gave out. After a minute or two of careful breathing, he decided it wasn't.
He heard a shuffling sound from the basement, then the sound of forceps dropped in a metal bowl. He shuddered. Herbert, working tirelessly as always. How had everything gone so wrong? Dan thought it was good, worthy work. At first. Able to bring back people from the dead? No more calls to the next of kin, forcing them awake in the middle of the night to crash head-on into the realization that someone they loved was gone and wasn't coming back, not ever. Ever was a long time.
He saw himself in the future, as a dignified physician. He'd have gotten a little older, his youthful energy tempered by wisdom and experience. But always kind, always calm. And he'd look at the family, shaking and begging him to help their loved one. The power to give life literally in his pocket, contained in a syringe. And every time, he would be sober and serious, but he could also be able to say It was severe, but they're alive. They're going to be alright. Every time. He pictured other doctors and nurses in the E.R. calling the time of death, backing away from the table. He'd lin in, tilt the head back. Give back the most precious gift possible in a green-filled syringe.
And when they came back, confused and in pain, he'd hold them still, press their head into his chest. He'd tell them It's alright. You're alright now.
His fantasy faded and Dan shivered alone in the cold kitchen. The house was always cold now; the work required it, among a great many other things. Dan stumbled over to the fridge and pulled on the door. Some condiments, a single egg, a pint of milk that had expired a week ago. Nothing to write home about.
The work wasn't about any of that, not anymore. Dan was starting to wonder if it ever had been. Instead, Herbert retreated for longer and longer hours into his sanctuary. Put together progressively stranger things, stitching together flesh and ligaments that were never meant to be arranged together by any sane Creator. A tinker playing with spare parts, that was all.
Dan found himself standing in front of the basement door, with no recollection of how he'd gotten there. Hadn't he just been in the kitchen? It didn't matter much anymore. He felt giddy; his head was loose upon his shoulders.
What was Herbert working on now? Dan pushed the basement door open with trembling fingers. He wasn't quivering just from cold and sleep deprivation; he was eager with anticipation. What if there had been a development while he'd been at the hospital? Herbert seemed to work for days at a stretch, hardly stopping for rest or to eat. Surely in all that time, something must have happened.
Herbert was bent over the table, sleeves rolled above his elbows. He was actually humming as he worked. Dan saw that he was sewing tendons and ligaments from a detached hand to a different wrist with the utmost care. His hands were deft, sure in their touch. The needle danced hypnotically between the tissues rapidly. Herbert was in his element. He looked up, face brightening just a little when he saw his colleague.
"Ah, Dan, good! I'm glad you're here. Would you come and hold this for me? I've just about managed to reattach it, but I can't quite get the angle right without some support from the distal side."
He didn't force Dan to come towards the table, didn't make him look. Dan took that step on his own and looked because he wanted to. He was aware that he'd been distancing himself from the grisly work in the basement. Herbert thought it was because he disapproved of the work, but that was the furthest thing from the truth. Dan admired it and was compelled to look. Sometimes when he lay awake at night, he could feel the basement pulling at him inexorably to come down the stairs and look at what we can do, Dan. Look what has been done. Look what will be done.
Dand approached the table, not speaking. He immediately saw the dilemma; Herbert was stitching at an awkward angle. Dan's job was to literally hold the dismembered hand. He grabbed it around the wrist gently and pulled it up so that Herbert had access to the complex framework of veins, ligatures, tendons, and cartilage that made up the human body.
"Good, just like that," Herbert muttered, frowning a little in concentration as the needle flicked back and forth. "A little higher please…this way he won't get a cramp in his vascular system, ha! Very good! Give Dr. Cain a hand," Herbert cried jovially as he stitched the final pieces. "Isn't it beautiful?"
Dan looked at the colored system, purple veins bulging alongside red muscle and tendon. He didn't say anything; he didn't have to. It was beautiful. The room began swimming around him. He set the hand down gently on the table and took a steadying breath. The hand was around the same size as his own, with a small scar on the pad of the index finger. Dan wondered where the former owner had gotten that particular souvenir. These fingers had assisted in many things during their time; tied shoes. They had perhaps braided someone's hair or had held another person. And now they were being repurposed for this.
Revulsion rose up in his gorge, threatening to choke him. The only reason he was mixed up in this at all was because of West. Dan felt himself sway.
"Are you alright, Dan?" Herbert asked with quick concern, noting the pasty complexion and dazed look for the first time. "You look worse than him." Gestured to the partially reconstructed cadaver on the table.
Dan blinked hard, fighting to stay on his feet. Herbert's face swam in and out of focus. "I need to get some air," he muttered. When he turned to go, his legs simply crumped underneath him and he was lying on the cold concrete floor.
Herbert was kneeling by his side, turning him over gently. Dan panted and blinked up at him rapidly.
"Dan, you're burning up," Herbert said, pressing a hand to his forehead and taking his pulse with the other hand. "Pulse is up, I'm sure your blood pressure is similarly elevated…When did you start feeling this way?"
"Go to hell," Dan mumbled woozily.
"Let's get you upstairs," Herbert said in a mild voice, attempting to pull him up. Dan clung to him–out of necessity. The way his head felt, he would've fallen flat on his face alone.
Slowly, they made their way up the cramped staircase. Herbert grunted and pulled. Dan, for his part, tried to keep his feet from getting tangled up together. Herbert leaned him gently against the wall near the kitchen, to rest. Dan slid down the wall to the floor the minute his feet were properly under him, head spinning. He stared at the ground and didn't look up when Herbert's shadow fell over him.
"You're sick," Herbert told him gently. "We need to get you taken care of."
"Herbert, where did you get the hand?" Dan asked in a dangerously mild tone.
West straightened up. "I hardly think now is the time for–"
"Answer the goddamn question!" Dan yelled, nerves singing with tension.
"From the hospital," Herbert replied stiffly. "You remember the patient that came in three days ago, the one in the car crash?"
Dan thought about it. After a frighteningly long few moments, the memory slid hazily into place.
"The upper arm was crushed in the accident," Herbert continued. "The entire limb had to be–"
"You did not," Dan said in a disbelieving voice. His hands were trembling. "The nerve damage wasn't that extensive."
"I think you're mistaken," Herbert replied with thinly veiled derision, designed to make you doubt what you believed. A year ago, Dan wouldn't have recognized the lie. Now he knew better. "The limb was severely damaged, completely irreparable–"
"No! I looked at it; we could've repaired the arterial damage, could've repaired the tissue. You amputated that man's arm without a good reason! For your leisure, like it was a–a spare part! Herbert, you deprived that man of a vital part of his body!" Dan was screaming now and he couldn't make himself stop.
Herbert's face hardened. "He was a drunk driver, Dan. He had a record. This wasn't his first crash. Last time he killed someone."
"Stop," Dan murmured, putting a hand to his throbbing head.
"He killed an innocent girl, Dan. Walking home from school, on the sidewalk, even. She was killed instantly, he walked away without a scratch. She was eleven years old, and he didn't get any punishment for taking a life."
"And you took his hand."
Silence. Dan knew what would come of that smirking, blasphemous mouth before West uttered the damning sentence.
"I'm doing far more good with it than he ever did."
Dann looked up at him with hatred. West didn't look at all troubled with his casual dismissal of an entire human life. "What he is, that's what you are inside," Dan told him, nodding towards the basement door, towards the partial cadaver in the basement.
"Dan, we're talking about saving lives," Herbert cajoled. "Surely these small losses are worth the knowledge."
"You're like them," Dan muttered. "Just spare parts. Your heart might beat, and you might breathe. But you're just like them. Hollow on the inside."
Herbert sighed wearily. "You're tired. And sick, for that matter. Go to bed."
"No."
"Very well, sleep on the floor. It makes no difference to me."
The click of dress shoes upon the floor and Herbert was gone, disappeared down to the basement with his fellow monsters.
Dan shivered on the hallway floor, curled up tightly. It mattered no more to him where he slept than it did to the beast downstairs masquerading as a man. He dozed, feverish. He dreamed of staircases that turned every which way and always, always led to the basement.
Herbert reappeared an hour later, shirt covered in gore and tousled. He looked over and saw Dan slumped towards the floorboards, white as the wall behind him. Herbert went over to him, grabbed him under the arms, and hauled him back to his room.
With a lot of effort, he managed to hoist Dan onto the bed, took his pulse. Herbert's brow furrowed in concern. He fetched a thermometer and stethoscope and waited impatiently for the results. Seeing the result, he hissed quietly. It was much too high; if Dan stayed like this for much longer, he'd risk seizures, brain damage, coma. The information rattled through his mind obsessively, supplying too much too quickly. "Dan?" he asked anxiously, shaking him. Dan didn't stir in the slightest. Herbert pulled up a chair beside the bed, and leaned back into it. Ran a trembling hand through his hair. He applied a cool rag to Dan's burning forehead, but it didn't help. An hour passed, and then another. Dan didn't wake up and barely even moved.
Every half hour, Herbert would lean forward and retake Dan's vitals, glancing anxiously at the pale face. Finally, West had to face facts. With a quivering breath, he stood up and walked to the basement. Preparations had to be made.
It took him two trips to get everything he needed upstairs. He gathered a few lengths of rope, some rags, a rubber band, another bowl of cold water, a blanket, a few empty glass tubes, a syringe, a bottle of reagent, and a revolver. This he grabbed last and looked at it long and hard before flipping open the chamber. Empty, naturally. Dan didn't like to leave loaded guns lying around. Herbert dug around in a drawer and found a few shells. He took one, placed it in the chamber, hesitated. Grabbed another and loaded it, admiring the blue sheen to the metal barrel and quietly delighting in the smooth snick the metal made as he pushed the chamber home. "Just in case," he whispered to the empty basement. "Just in case."
Herbert carefully tied the roped around Dan's wrists and ankles, careful to wrap his appendages in rags first to avoid cutting into his friend's flesh. He laid the blanket over the shuddering man, leaving one arm uncovered. He looked at Dan for a long time, then grabbed an empty tube and needle. He took some of Dan's blood, filling two glass chambers for study later. Then he picked up the syringe and the bottle of reagent. It was the same strain he used himself to stay awake, to complete the work. It could perhaps give Dan's immune system the jolt it needed to fight off the fever long enough for Dan to survive it.
Herbert could feel the reagent chipping away at the core of himself sometimes, replacing it with something altogether different. It didn't matter much now. It might have mattered a few years ago when Herbert was just starting his work with Dr. Gruber in Switzerland, but he doubted it. The thing that had led to Dan dying now would also be the thing that saved him. Herbert was almost sure of it. It would work. It had to.
Dan was deathly still on the bed. A pink flush highlighted his cheekbones, and his dark hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. Herbert checked one last time to make sure the fever hadn't abated on his own. "Don't make me," Herbert whispered and wasn't aware of it. "Not to him."
After a few seconds, it was clear he didn't have a choice. Dan couldn't wait any longer. Herbert's hands shook as he measured the dosage, and pulled it into the syringe. He tied a rubber band, waited for a vein to strain towards the surface of his skin, and plunged the needle into Dan's arm.
Herbert didn't sleep that night, or for the two that followed. Dan twitched, deep in fever-induced delirium. His dreams were terrible, filled with shadows and blood. Meg's face flashed in and out, distorted with hatred and death. Something moaned piteously and scratched on the other side of the basement door, desperate to be set free upon the world. Dan thought he recognized Herbert's voice, then he thought it was his own cries coming from behind the door. He realized he couldn't tell the difference. Maybe there wasn't any difference. He sank down again.
Herbert held the revolver in his left hand, watching Dan's face. Every so often, he would call out and moan. He called for Meg, mostly. For his parents. But a few of his plaintive cries were for Herbert. West waited patiently for the change that would signal him to take…drastic measures.
"You know, you were right about what you said," Herbert said quietly to the unconscious man on the bed. "About me. I'm not much better than a corpse on the inside. I've never been able to…connect well with others on an emotional level. I'm much more comfortable with matters of science, mathematics, things of absolutes. Matters of the heart are quite nebulous, beyond me…If there is such a thing as a soul, well. I'm not entirely sure I've got one."
He paused, listening to Dan's ragged breathing. Herbert cocked the hammer of the gun nervously, then released it.
"Living with you has been…enlightening for me, Dan. I only ever considered the work before. Our combined efforts have tempered the science with something else. I used to think science and affection were entirely distinct, but I think now that they might be intersectional after all. In fact, they're so tangled up together we'd never be able to pull them apart to see where one ends and the other begins. You showed me why it all matters. I've always been blind to half the picture, Dan. But you can see all of it. You've always been able to see it. That's why you did what you did for Dr. Halsey. For Meg." He swallowed and his dry throat gave an audible click. "And for me, I suppose. You keep me on the right side of things. You keep me from becoming a ghoul among the cadavers. I need you to stay. You look into the places I can't see."
He waited, watching for a reaction. None came. Herbert leaned back in the chair and scrubbed at his aching eyes. He looked down at the revolver in his hand, and rotated his hand. His hazel eyes stared down into the revolver's unblinking black one. There was a morbid fascination contained within that dark tunnel, peace through destruction. He wrenched his attention from the barrel of the gun. "I want you to stay," he said in a small voice.
Dan woke up the afternoon of the fourth day, with a raging thirst and a splitting headache. Herbert was sleeping in the chair next to the bed, head lolling. Dan pulled woozily at his hand to wipe his eyes and encountered resistance. After a long moment, he realized his hands were tied. He yanked again, with a little more urgency. His head pounded; he screwed his eyes shut tight against the shaft of sunlight streaming through the window. Herbert came awake at once with a wild look in his eyes.
"You're awake!" Herbert exclaimed, delight playing across his haggard features. "How do you feel?"
"Thirsty," Dan croaked. His mouth was desert-dry. Herbert stared at him for an uncomprehending moment and then, hurriedly untied the ropes around his wrists. "Very well, I'll get you some water."
He scurried off and returned with a glass of water. Dan's hands shook as he brought the water to his mouth. Herbert casually pressed his hand to his forehead and removed it quickly. "The fever's gone now; you should start feeling much better after you've eaten."
"Why did you tie me up?" Dan asked, rubbing at his wrists.
"You were sick," Herbert replied, looking somewhat abashed. "I didn't think you would…I thought it best when you woke up if….well, I could not be in two places at once," he finished impatiently.
Dan looked down at his arm. The crook of his arm was sore and badly bruised. He looked at the raised dots in the center and then stared dully at Herbert.
"I had to, Dan," the man said, implacable from his place near the bed. "It was close. I didn't think you would live. I took some blood before I administered the reagent–" he pulled a vial from his pocket and showed him. "So that we may be able to determine what initially caused the illness. It could tell us if…if this was necessary."
Dan could feel an alien presence in his blood; a weight on his heart that felt like an eternity alone in a silent crypt. He knew instantly and without any definable reason that he was tainted forever, in some subtle way. Things would never be the same.
"If it wasn't, I don't want to know," he said.
Herbert started to say something, then stopped himself and nodded. He understood.
"If you can get up tonight, it would probably do you some good," Herbert told him later that evening. "You'll be dizzy and sore, but the sooner you're up the sooner you can start to mend. I've got to check on something downstairs; just call if you need anything."
Dan shifted his eyes to Herbert and nodded silently. West left to go back and play with his monsters, while his newly created one lay weak and pale underneath a blanket. Dan took a deep breath and hauled himself upright. After a few minutes, he was able to dress in clean clothes and shakily make his way down the stairs. Herbert glanced up, once again engrossed in his worktable. When he saw Dan, he quickly pulled a stool over and the weak man gratefully sank onto it. He couldn't bring himself to help with the specimens, not just yet. But he would be near, and Herbert knew it, too. He'd sit down here and watch it all, to see for Herbert. And to see for the corpses, newly reanimated, because they were part of him now, too.
A few weeks later, Herbert had finally succeeded in getting an intact head from God knew where. He brought it down to the basement and Dan silently helped hold it steady as Herbert reattached it to the neck. It was slow work, very tedious and painstaking. But Herbert never slowed his pace. Dan waited patiently until Herbert began pouring the reagent carefully into the correct places, watching for a sign.
The eyes finally pulled open and the rotting jaw creaked agape to let out a rattling breath that stank of the grave. Dan looked down into the reanimated corpse's eyes, recognized himself in their soulless depths, and smiled.