Title: "Contagion" 6/6
Author: monimala
Fandom: "General Hospital"
Rating/Classification: AC, AU, various pairings, language, violence, sexual
situations.
Disclaimer: Nope, I don't own these characters.
Summary: A little revisionist history and some cross-over inspiration make
for a very different Port Charles. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Blood is thicker than water. He knows this firsthand, from the taste of it, coppery and tart, on his tongue. Teeth slicing skin, making shallow cuts. Beautifully rich, red, liquid. Like the over-priced tomato bisque they used to serve at the Port Charles Grill.
He remembers that Carly used to keep red and white cans in her cupboards. Saturday nights were soup and cheese sandwich nights for Michael. And those simple meals were a thousand times more satisfying than ten dollar bisque.
Of course, he knows about the boy.
There are no secrets between vampires. Everything hangs in the air they cannot breathe.
As he re-traces her steps to the club, candle wax still clinging to his fingers, he knows what she has found. What was waiting for her when she, thinking him asleep, climbed from the bed.
She last saw her son, her mother, and the most loyal of her husband's bodyguards, in a limousine heading away from the city. What she does not know is that someone followed.
Michael was plucked from a quiet neighborhood in rural Ohio shortly after his eighth birthday. Jason brought him back home with the promise of new eyes, new teeth, and new loyalty.
Blood. Thicker than water.
He was not there when the boy was turned, not invited to the grand event, which had been merely a formality. Five years is more than enough time to create a monster out of any human being. "Tell her," his brother had mocked. "Why don't you tell your bitch goddess what we've done?"
As he glides into the brightly lit depths of Club 101, the answer to that mockery is clear. Because it would kill her.
How the woman he loves, has always loved, is still standing, he does not know. For one look at her dulled brown eyes tells him she's dying.
"You knew." Not a question. She glances from him to Michael and back again. To the other figures who have come out of the woodwork. Caleb, Faith, and her personal Judas.
"Yes." He does not shrug, does not make excuses. The time for that is long passed. "Our kind have no secrets from one another."
A smile pulls at the corners of her lips. What passes for a smile. The proper nerves making the proper connections. "I thought *our* kind didn't either."
The seconds stretch by in slow motion as she raises her beloved firearm. She squeezes off two shots, catching Faith in the chest and Caleb in the leg, before Michael gives a cry of outrage, "Mommy!" and flies at her. She gets off several more shots, wild, as the slender youth avoids the slash of her switchblade.
He ducks, easily, the hail of bullets, twisting to keep Jason back as mother and child struggle. Only it isn't Jason behind him. No. It's his own betrayer. The mirror, cracked.
"Have you brought the Easter Bunny, too, Enzito?"
"No, mi hermano... just death," he whispers, as he launches himself into the looking glass. As he puts his fist through it.
Luis's rib cage folds like wet cardboard. He has barely a moment to look surprised, to realize that his pathetic brother has triumphed at the most inopportune of moments, before he is staring at the pulsing lump of his own black heart.
Blood is thicker than water, after all.
They know this firsthand.
***
She gave birth to a fighter. She's always known that. His even white teeth are bloody, the pointed canines glinting with the shine. She knows it's hers. He's made contact. Her shoulder, her wrist, as she struggles to keep hold of her gun and him at the same time.
"You left, Mommy." he hisses, and, oh, his eyes are blank. Not his father's eyes, no. They're his uncle's eyes. He's crashed headfirst into a hanging tree. "You left me."
"I protected you," she snaps, shoving him against the bar. His strength is twice hers. She pictures a flock of vamps crouched over him... blood from so many different sources...and her stomach roils with disgust. Were there a million tiny cuts all over his body? Did they laugh as they turned an innocent into a demon?
Did they laugh like she's laughing now? Hysterically? On the edge of grief? Of madness? She grabs one skinny leg between her knees, ready to wrench him to the ground...he makes a sound like a wounded animal and, like an animal, he pays her back with a bite. His teeth clamp down on her throat.
It hurts. Of course, it hurts.
She takes him down to the ground anyway, nearly blinded by the agony, wondering why the cross is failing her and realizing...*oh*... maybe you have to have faith for it to burn...
She never had enough. Never...no...and that's why this is happening.
"M-michael," she pleads.
"You have to pay, Mom," he says, mouth full of her blood...drinking from her now like he was never able to as a baby.
"She's paid. She's paid enough. " All of a sudden, there are no teeth. There is no boy suckling at her veins. There's nothing except the bluest, palest, of vampire eyes and the sound of cracking and tearing and something exploding like a ripe melon.
"Jason?" she wonders, bringing up her gun. Confusion. Clarity. All at once. A boy at a dive bar. A girl in a trashy top and a short skirt. Lifetimes ago.
"Yeah, Carly." He's died too many times. It's nothing to him now. "I...I'm sorry." And he smiles at her, really smiles, as she shoots him. He looks... almost...blissful...as Lorenzo tackles him and rips his head from his shoulders.
Then, hands coated in gore are pulling her into a lap equally damp with blood and waste. Somehow, it's romantic... "Carly...my Carly..." More romantic than wine and flowers and making love till dawn.
"Michael...?" She asks even though she knows, she feels it.
Lorenzo shakes his head, instinctively turning her away from the pile of ash, bone, and flesh only a few feet away.
He cradles her close...and she remembers what it was like...all those
years ago... dancing in the circle of his arms to cheesy pop love songs...back when they lived in Technicolor, not black and white and gray. Of course...they never danced with her broken arm trapped between them. With a 9 millimeter pressing into his ribs.
"Stay with me," he pleads, and his lips are cool against her torn throat,
begging... begging for one chance. The chance they don't deserve. "Stay with me, Carly..."
Is it blood or tears that leak from her eyes as they start to flutter closed? She can't tell. With the last vestiges of her strength, she shakes her head..."No...no stay with *me*..." and pulls the trigger.
There is a spark. There was always...always...a spark.
"S-see me home."
***
Jax's keening howl is like a siren. An alarm that no one will answer. He's on his knees in the dirt, the golden hair prickling up and over his skin. Dimly, she knows she should go to him... touch him... try to be comforting.
The club is on fire. Smoke is pouring from the roof, the boarded-over windows, and wood crackles as things break and pop and melt. Fire makes an odd kind of music...there's a rhythm. She never would've guessed that.
She stands in the glow of it, just close enough for the heat to singe the
hair on her arms, to light her cigarette. Carly was inside. She knows that. *Was*.
She'll have to find another job. It's never a good day when somebody you
know winds up dead.
"Maxie?" He comes from the shadows, where they're all watching at a safe distance from the random showers of sparks. *All.* What's left of them. Caleb, digging the silver from his kneecap. The girls. And--
"What do you want, Zander?" The question is a courtesy. She knows. She's always known.
"Just a dance," he whispers, eyes large and dark and liquid with sadness.
And she doesn't protest as he pulls her into his arms and they begin to sway.
"Make it last forever?" she pleads, blinking back the tears.
He brushes her hair from her face, fingers tracing the ring in her eyebrow before he tilts up her chin and kisses her. "Forever," he promises.
They watch the last piece of her world turn to ash.
Then, he takes her by the hand...and leads her into his.
--end--
February 8, 2004.