What if R and Julie hadn't met outside the city? What if R had been captured, and taken by soldiers inside the fortified city of the Living? A different version of the R/Julie story, one where they meet in her world, not his.

Isaac Marion owns Warm Bodies. I just enjoy playing with the characters.

A Dark Negative of Love

Quick note: Last weekend, FanFiction was experiencing a number of technical problems. I didn't know the extent of the issues when I posted the Mother's Day chapter yesterday, on Mother's Day.

The chapter was just supposed to be a sweet little bonus piece, outside of the regular posting schedule. This world I've been writing in for the past three months is so unremittingly harsh and bleak that I thought I would post something that showed a bit more hope.

After posting that chapter, I got a better feel for the technical problems the platform was experiencing, and decided to be safe and not post the next regular chapter until the problems were fixed.

It seems that they are resolved now, so I'm posting the regular chapter.

Thanks to everybody who's been reading and reviewing!

Chapter 29 – Waking Up

I faded away again, and as darkness descended, I felt something soft brush across my lips.

I gasped as I felt someone above me. Everything was jumbled. Air, I needed air. I couldn't breathe, and there was something…I choked and began to struggle in the darkness as I felt tubes being pulled out of my throat.

Finally the sounds around me started to make sense.

"R, I'm here. Open your eyes and look at me! R!" a voice was calling to me from somewhere on the other side of the darkness.

I opened my eyes, trying to reach for my throat as I greedily sucked in air, and saw the face of an angel bending over me. She had blond hair and matching eyes. Yellow eyes. With tears falling from them, tears she was wiping away with the back of her hand.

I blinked rapidly, trying to focus. She touched my cheek with her hand.

"Hi," she said softly.

Julie, I thought. That's Julie – but her eyes? They're yellow. Weren't they blue? "Hi," I rasped out.

Another woman's voice behind her said, "You gave us quite a scare there, R."

I didn't want to take my eyes off of this face, which was familiar yet strange with the yellow eyes, but I looked around. I tried to move my hands again, but couldn't. Suddenly they were free, and I lifted one and held it up in front of my face. My body felt full of movement, sensations that were vaguely familiar, as from a long distant past. I began to realize that I was feeling my pulse and respiration, as I was breathing, and blood was flowing. There was pain too, but I pushed that away for the moment.

I reached out to touch Julie's face and said, "Hi," again, more strongly.

"You're back," she said. "Your eyes, though. They were gray, now they're…"

"Yellow? Like yours?" I said, realizing that I could speak more easily, even if my throat was raspy.

"Wait, what?" the other woman's voice said. "Julie, look at me," she demanded.

Julie turned her head, and I heard a gasp. "Oh my God. Your eyes match his!"

Julie turned back to me. "We're alike now," she said as she stroked my face.

"What happened?" I asked.

"We lost you," the brown-haired girl, whom I finally recognized as Nora, said.

"Remember…me?" a new voice asked.

I turned and saw a tall blond man, or rather a Dead, standing on my other side. He smiled, a real smile. He was wearing scrubs and had a surgical face mask pulled down around his neck. M, it was M. Names were coming back now.

"Being in here, operating room…I remembered," M said. "I was…a doctor. Told Nora…what to do."

"Wow," I said.

"Hands still…useless," he said sadly, holding them up in front of him.

"You'll get it back. Look at R," Nora said.

"Kiss me?" M asked simply.

"Yeah, right," Nora laughed. "I think Julie's got the kiss of life."

M laughed. "No harm…trying."

I laughed, startling everyone. M was still M. But the way he was looking at Nora…he seemed focused and quite happy. My laugh didn't last long, as it quickly turned into a choke and gasp, as I found my throat raw and uncooperative.

"It's from the breathing tube," Nora said. "Your throat will be sore for a bit."

I tried to sit up, but found it was difficult.

M leaned forward. "Let me…help," he said, grunting as he pulled me up to a sitting position. I swung my legs over the edge of the surgery cart, preparing to get down.

"Oh, no," Nora said, putting out her hands to stop me. "You're not going to walk. I can't believe even Julie's kiss can cure all that you've just been through. I'm getting a wheel chair."

I nodded, as I did feel weak.

Julie was standing next to the hospital cart, still staring at my face.

"You have some color in your cheeks, and all the gray and black is gone. What's left is more like human bruising," she said, stroking my back.

I reached for her hand, taking it in my own and sighing.

"What happened out there?" I asked.

Before Julie could answer, Nora reappeared with a wheelchair. As M helped me into it, she started to fill me in. "Once Julie's Dad was gone, the Boneys became disorganized. They did fight, sort of, but the soldiers were able to shoot them. We lost some of the Dead, mostly those who went out first, ahead of everyone else, but we didn't lose any of the Living soldiers."

I looked at M. "Any of our friends?"

He nodded sadly. "Green polo shirt guy…red-head with torn-stockings girl…and lady with the shopping bag," he replied.

"We never knew their names," I whispered.

"They didn't either…but I think…found peace…helping Living…" M replied.

I nodded my head in agreement, and we stared at one another for a minute, thinking of our friends who were gone.

Finally Nora rolled me out of the operating room and into the street. We were attracting a lot of attention, and initially I looked down at my lap, worrying about being shot again. Suddenly we heard clapping so I looked back up. The other Living started looking around, and then when they saw me, clapping and cheering.

Nora said, "What the…well, all right then." She motioned for M to push the wheelchair, and she started clapping too.

Rosy and Lieutenant Holton appeared at the front of the crowd, apparently drawn by the noise.

Rosy looked surprised but happy to see us. "Good to see you, R," he said. "The doctor told me that he lost you."

"He did," said Nora simply. "Julie brought him back. Look at their eyes."

The two men looked between Julie and me, and they both appeared as startled as Nora had originally. Rosy, of course, was the first to recover. "The color looks wonderful on you, Julie," he said gallantly.

M shrugged. "Leave the compliments…to me," he said.

As Nora and M pushed my wheelchair up the block, I realized we weren't headed for the guest quarters, but rather a new direction. "Where are we going?" I asked.

"Home," replied Julie simply. "I put in for a transfer to this dome and was assigned permanent housing. We live here now."

I smiled and reached for Julie's hand. I liked the sound of that. Living. Here. And especially, the "we" part.

THE END

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