Thanks for reviewing.
Guest - I'm not sure about doing Ireland from Brendan's POV, I'll have to have a long think about how I'd want to do it.
I've decided to keep all these in one place as one fic even though they won't be in order. Case and point right here. I was thinking of ways to write the prison section of Brendan's journey and this kind of hit me as how I wanted to do it, it's a bit of a different style than I usually write in and might be a bit confusing in places.
It's dark and pretty disturbing.
Covers Brendan in prison, meeting Dean, getting released, starting to work for Mr Arthur and his conversation with Jamie.
Brendan POV
He died, this is his body existing.
No counting days, he's here until he's not. He doesn't need to know more than that.
"Mr Brady you are only convicted for the death of Mr Seamus Brady, good behaviour you could be out in less than ten years."
Less than ten years. That hard faced bastard didn't know what ten years was other than a big fat pay day.
"This really is the best result we could have hoped for."
We? We. Because he paid him it was we. Because he had been set the challenge of getting a guilty man off charges because he was a coward and couldn't face thirty years.
Death was what he wanted, a death is what he got only it wasn't at the end of a snipers bullet, it wasn't a blaze of glory, it was the clank of a prison door.
Die or be killed. Have peace or be tormented.
When God heard his confession he must have thought him short of suffering. Only God didn't exist to dead men walking. He offered no hope, no chance for transformation, no salvation, only breath.
One look at the handwriting he knew who it was and he sent it back. Dead men don't need to haunt the living. Dead men need no reminders of life outside their coffin. To lift a nail and glimpse life that was torment. To see beyond the concrete and live in colour only for that colour to fade and those glimpses dissolve to nothing as the living forgot the dead that was true plague.
He is dead until he is alive.
The rats crawl around, make their deals with the tigers for another day at their grace. Free to scuttle around until the big cat's draw their claws.
He's neither tiger nor rat. He is dead and as a dead man he takes no sides, only keeps his grave to rest in. The concrete replacing wood, the bar replacing nails.
He looks out the window until sunlight burns his eyes and he stops looking.
He is a dead man who dreams only because he can't stop it, can't make it stop. The buzzing inside his head, the titter in his ear, the devil on his shoulder that reminds him that this is not a coffin and he is not dead. That there's life outside and it, it still moves without him.
The living move on from the dead. The living have to. There can be no stone around their neck, no burden, he will make himself dead to them so they can have their lives.
Live, breathe and bask in the sunlight where they belong, where he no longer does.
But that nagging whisper, that voice that belongs to a name he refuses to say, refuses to think only his heart remembers and it's a stronger force that calls it in the dead of night when the pangs won't realise their grip and he is forced to see them.
Dead men don't dream, don't have nightmares or terrors to contend with. They have peace, he's not dead.
There are wolves, meant to keep tigers and rats at peace. Divide and rule with a pack mentality. Like any pack there is weakness, those who want to prove their worth and those that were born tiger only to repent their claws but keep their teeth. Some that prey, some that feed and some that want the rats and tigers to join them.
"His name is Dr Gayle and he would like to speak to you."
He is neither wolf, nor tiger, nor rat. He is a dead man and dead men don't speak. They hold their secrets to their chest and keep them buried with them in their casket. He is not prey, not any longer. The constrictor is dead. He no longer twists his mind nor holds sway. The snake is dead, no more whiskey stained breath nor gravelled tongue and he's charring, blistering, screaming on the coals of Hell.
When the living no longer seek out the dead, there is pain so deep that it runs through bone, so staggering it cuts with a ragged dull edge at his insides and won't relent.
The living no longer seek the dead.
Ask and you shall receive.
The living are forgetting, healing as those that are do, those with blood in their veins instead of ice, those with warmth, he's getting everything that he had wanted for them and he's a dead man in a concrete coffin of agony.
The dead should feel no pain.
The wolves circle, growling at him, barking, baring their teeth.
"We are here to help you, your welfare is our priority."
His is a dead man, he dug his own grave with his bare hands, scrapped the ground, got soil under his nails and bled to have it deep enough only to climb in without means to finish the job.
The grind of metal, the clink of keys, the never ending noise of those tigers preying on rats, rats daring above their station and paying the price for not knowing their place in crimson tides and torn skin, cut off tails and bitten ears.
"We're giving you a cell mate."
Rat or tiger. Mouse.
Wears the skin of a rat but the tigers have had their way. Turned to snakes and sank their fangs in, pumped it with poison, taken hold and are squeezing their grip. The mouse has given in to the snakes, will take no more.
Dangles from the bars as though swinging in the wind only their no wind in this grave and the snakes can't have him, not when he had been that mouse once and knows that snakes have slithered back to their trees and are setting their next ambush, unaffected and unashamed.
He is a dead man, and a dead man's word holds no meaning but the mouse hears them, takes them and wraps them around itself as a shield to heal behind.
Only the poison is lingering. It's clasp deep and in the very cells of it's being.
This mouse had many snakes, many poisons that held fast and could not be cleansed, not by a dead man but if the shield will hold, he loses nothing by giving it.
Only the mouse is not a mouse, he's still a rat with visions of being a tiger to kill the snakes.
And the whispering in his ear of the voice of the man he will not name remains. Coaxes and pests.
These wolves believe that they hide in sheep's wool. They're still a pack, ruthless and efficient.
"Mr Brady this board grants you parole on the grounds of your continued and sustained good behaviour."
Dead men don't make trouble, they know their actions have no meaning.
"You will be released."
Dead men don't get out of their coffins and walk back with the living.
The noise splits his ears, wonderful sound of one of the living, the one he died for. She cries on his neck, the tears on his skin form a river bed.
He doesn't ask about the man his heart screams for, beating again on the tarmac, sunlight no longer blinding, warm and comforting.
Dead men don't feel warmth, he's not dead, he no longer needs to be.
He needs to get used to the living, to being alive.
"He still lives in Hollyoaks, he's still in the flat."
For some he has to remain dead as long as they have everything they should have.
He can't quieten his heart, can't stop it calling, fiercer, stronger than ever.
Just a glimpse. A single glance will soothe.
He treads as a dead man, keeps himself out of sight. The living can't see the dead, not if they have to remain that way.
He is Technicolor, vibrant, beautiful, captivating, the kind of treasure he has killed to protect.
"Oi, never said nought about that." His smile still lights a darkened room.
The urge to become alive again, truly alive, has him twitching, aching to move out of the shadow, but he has healed, the living have healed and need no more wounds.
He takes the vision of him, the splendour of him with him as he forces himself to move away, retreat.
He is alive and he has needs, wants that surge through him. He has no means to meet them. The cost of the living of having life after death has him seeking out change, a means to provide, only he was a convicted murderer and there are taints that go along with that and the change is too radical, too alien so he goes to the tigers and he becomes one because he can, he was one before.
The splendour doesn't dull. The call of his heart, the ache to be truly alive doesn't wane.
He wants to be alive, he craves it. A parched man in desperate need.
The door grips his knuckles. The key he has weighs in his pocket. He could walk straight in but he doesn't deserve to pass the threshold without invitation.
"Can I help you?"
"I'm looking for…" His name, the one that he wouldn't think of but couldn't get out of his mind, that he hadn't spoken for years. "Steven."
"Who are you?"
Friend? Lover? Heartbreaker? Dead man resurrected.
"Brendan Brady."
"You're Brendan."
"That's what I said."
The twist in his face, the shock in his eyes. Seems he wasn't as dead to the living as he thought.
"He's… What do you want?"
"To see him."
"You think he wants to see you?" Venom in his tone. "You should go."
"I want to see him."
"He doesn't need you. What you did to him… He doesn't need someone like you anywhere near him."
"And you are?"
"I'm the man he's going to marry. I'm who makes him happy, I'm the one that picked up the pieces. You've got no idea, you broke him and it's taken years to put that right, you want to break him again? Go away Brendan, Ste doesn't need you fucking him over again."
The door slams shut and echo's around him.