ᴡᴇ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ʜᴀᴛᴇ ʟɪғᴇ.

we need life. we feed off life.

Origins unknown, he couldn’t say how much energy the symbiote would have had to keep going, to keep taking on whatever undead populous of the city there was to stand in his way, but by the time it felt like he was all but spit out onto the concrete again in unceremonious fashion, Henry was sure he didn’t want to push that envelope. Already, he felt hungry as if the energy used hadn’t just been that belonging to some alien parasite. Already, he felt ill and appearances might have suggested as much in heavy-lidded eyes and the presence of dark circles. The two of them together didn’t leave much gas left in the fuel tank and neither did a growing collective of injuries that he might have been able to heal had there been a reprieve; but much like the bugs to herald their new and hopefully temporary reality, the swarms of the Black seemed to be ever-present, never sleeping and always waiting for someone to close their eyes and lull into slumber where death awaited.

Too bad it was easier said than done to not stare at the back of his eyelids once he had stowed himself away in the abandoned shell of - well, he couldn’t say what it was, but it had been quiet and, though eerie, quiet was better than the growling, the shrieking, the menacing cries that echoed through the air from parts unknown and creatures just as curious had they not been so terrifyingly human in origin.

Zombies - they were a bunch of fucking zombies, and as far as Henry knew, as far as he could tell and in as far as he knew about such a treacherous future where magic had been the crux of everything sour and putrid to befall the Green and the Red, wiping out life as the planet had known it, there were only so many holdouts of humanity left to turn impossible tides.

But in the encroachment of exhaustion, light sleep the only thing to take his mind off the aches and pains and oddly present craving for something chocolate, there had been something moving in similar spaces - movement that wasn’t inherently human, but wasn’t the scratching of inhuman limbs and didn’t carry the same stench of death and decay that washed the air like a bad aerosol spray. One might have been able to say it was less clumsy than anything that could have chased them through the destruction though, truth be told, there was little to no finesse in escaping the ravenous undead as long as someone did. Someone, in some cases, was better than no one at all.

Then again, that someone could’ve been less well-intended than hopeful anticipation suggested, and Henry was up on his feet again before there was the opportunity to be caught off guard, taking with him what, in comparison to alien limbs that, however brittle, could harden into something akin to a weapon, was a subpar excuse for a baseball bat in the leg over an overturned and shattered table. He’d investigate - the noise that had been made, the murmuring like a discussion was being had, and just who it might have been coming from with hopes, perhaps poorly-laid, that he wasn’t the only unfortunate sod who found himself in such a living nightmare.

Nick wasn’t entirely sure how he had found himself there or what had triggered the turn of events that might have been responsible for this. He didn’t want to seem like a man shouting at the clouds when it came to certain things but his thoughts kept circling back to Nate, despite the inner voice telling him it was different circumstances. At the very least, if it had been his older brother the person would have been standing in front of him right before he found himself in such a desolate world. Also, Leonard probably wouldn’t have been a go-to individual to come with them. Putting the fact that Nick’s own skills for defending himself were fairly lacking on a good day.

One moment he had been riding his bike down the sidewalk and the next, he was tumbling forward through sludge and decay that had covered the ground. San Francisco long forgotten as he had made whatever attempt it was to find cover. Not answers, but cover. Exhaustion from an overnight shift had crept its way into his limbs, over his shoulders and around him like a tight hug from behind that he couldn’t quite shake. By now, he would have found his way up the stairs of the Hargreeves mansion and face-first in his bed where he could sleep the day away with some hope of waking up with a boost of energy or the feeling of being moderately human.

The thoughts of sleep were probably a way to torture himself more than the monstrous landscape that he had found himself in. Nick just had to push through it and move forward, unwilling to be caught by the creatures that lurked around here. Otherworldly sounds aside, most he could make out words of some sort of intelligence that Leonard just shook his head at. Single-minded and completely feral. Nick wasn’t going to make the attempt to try to have the same sort of thought process that Klaus had seemed to have when the Rot had come to San Francisco for the short time it had been there and come home trailing behind him someone who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He wasn’t walking up to any of these things with the intent of having a full waiting staff of the undead living at the mansion. It caused his stomach to turn at the thought of it as he continued forward. Somewhere close behind him Leonard trudged along, at the very least he wasn’t alone. “I’m just saying...I probably shouldn’t have snubbed the idea of ordering Chipotle last night. I don’t think I even sat down to breathe the entire shift.” Nick continued on the seemingly one sided conversation, he could feel Len’s eyes roll. For him, it wasn’t a matter of figuring out how he got there right now. It was just a matter of figuring out if he was alone.

More often than not if Nick entertained the idea of slowing down or taking a rest, Leonard would just push him forward. Regardless of how exhausted Nick had started feeling. “I just want to say ho--” Nick trailed off for a moment as he slowed to a stop, eyes forward when he thought he had heard something. “Hello?”

There had been no rhyme nor reason that Henry could decipher other than one fact that, shrill as it rang in his ears, he knew was true: It wasn’t his doing. For anything that he could have brought onto the residents of San Francisco, the Rot hadn’t been it on his own volition. Yes, he had opened a portal once. Yes, some of the Black had leached into the city once to create an imbalance in natural forces. Yes, it had killed a number of people, but in this case and this instance, it wouldn’t be an ailing magician to blame -

- or would it?

Henry couldn’t say for sure, but in the ebb and flow of magical forces and energies, he knew well enough that he wasn’t the only one who could have brought Hell to Earth - be it Hell wrought with zombies, cut out from the cloths of existentialism itself, or dragged up from what were once thought deeply laid graves. No, necromancy was not his cup of tea and in so many ways, he didn’t expect it to be Madelyne’s either, no particular instance of zombified citizens brought to life stored in his memory for as long as he had known her. If this was anyone, it would be someone else, someone he might not have known the current existence of and, perhaps, they didn't know very much about the teleportational circumstances of this place either.

But ailing magicians and magical beings weren’t his priority as much as the voice in the same space, fingers clenching tighter as they wrapped more firmly around the hard corners of the table leg to a point where, had he some iota of super strength, it might have started to crack under the pressure. Instead, there were simply white knuckles as slow footsteps erred on the side of keeping quiet - as quiet as possible despite the bone debris and manufactured garbage underfoot - in his approach. If they were one of these creatures, it would have come with significant danger though Henry truly doubted he would be able to be so quiet to keep them from charging. If they weren’t - if they were someone alive and uninfected by the overabundance of Rot, they might have been a bat swing away all the same as he was.

It was just always best to err on the side of caution despite a growing familiarity of voice, momentarily taking the leg of the table down for what was a less than grand entrance. He sprung forward, intangibility hopefully intact as it extended into the makeshift weapon he carried, and held the leg up like he was going to take a grand slam into the far reaches of Fenway’s Green Monster - not that Green would be the color of his ultimate demise in this place so much as it would have been the retribution for all against the darkness.

“You,” he spat out as he stepped in and saw the intended target of frightful consideration, letting out a sign and letting his arms fall, weapon clattering along with it in the solid state he suddenly found himself in, “son of a bitch!”

A emotional response to say the least, Henry letting out a heaving sigh as everything slumped - his arms, his shoulders, the tension in his muscles and perhaps even in his spine as he leaned forward a little, still not so content in the exhaustion of an alien overriding an already quick metabolism. Under the progression of fear, everything felt heavier, Henry taking a second to gain some bearing while he heart continued to beat heavily in his ears, a whole body experience of blood-born tension in his veins and bones, pushing at once-taut muscle. “What are you doing here?!”

Somehow, there was something more terrifying to him than being in a world overpopulated by zombies and him being on the menu. Not that Nick had been too terrified of getting caught as much as he didn’t want to be put in a position where he would be bitten. Infected. Nick wasn’t the type to sign up for the experiment; one too many zombie movies that he had frequently watched had told him it was just a recipe for heartache on the road to survival. Knowing his luck, he might have been poor schmuck number one million who got infected on the way back to safety and ended up causing a zombie apocalypse back in San Francisco.

But that would all be saddled up if he didn’t find a way to end his own life before it got too far. Nick had a long time to think about the possibilities when he was always faced with the possibility of staring at him from the parlor or table in the form of Leonard. He didn’t try to sugar coat it but he did really try to overlook it because it wasn’t as if Nick had friends he could turn to and bear his soul. Much like communicating with the dead...it wasn’t as if Leonard was going to be able to tell anyone anything. Nick was the only one who understood him.

There would be several different ways that Nick would have approached this scenario if he had been aware that it was going to happen, mostly he would’ve opted out of going to a dimension filled with the undead and mutated. Secondly, he probably wouldn’t have worn scrubs and the type of shoes he was wearing. Nick’s focus since he had arrived there was entirely on himself, he really hadn’t put his feelers out for the fact that he probably wasn’t alone in this scenario. Leonard felt like a non-entity at the time being, he blended in. There wasn’t the same chill of fear and terror going down his spine as it would anyone else who had been pulled from their homes to this place.

When he had asked the air if something was around the corner, he really hadn’t expected an answer. He really didn’t think anyone would jump out and if they did, he half-expected that he probably would be lunged at. Despite the silence that filled the area they were in, knowing it only carried with it the weight of a seemingly one-sided conversation.

“What the fuck?!” Nick was yanked back by the strap of his bag by the zombie behind him who reacted almost immediately to someone jumping out at the two of them. Something that almost terrified him more than someone jumping out as he landed unceremoniously at Leonard’s feet. He would have scrambled to get to his feet and run off if it had been one of the creatures that lurked there but it wasn’t. A wave or relief washed over him when he saw Henry and he nearly hung his head in relief when he pulled himself to his feet.

“Oh, you know...I decided to go on vacation and there were really low rates in Hell on Expedia.” Nick dusted off his legs as he took in the sight of Henry, even if he was still trying to get his heart to stop from potentially leaping out of his chest he didn’t hide the look of relief and concern that was on his face. “I’m probably here for the same reason you are, which there is no discernable reason for either one of us to be here.”

Had the situation not been so terrible, it could have been hilarious: Henry, on one side, holding a bat as if he would have been able to do anything with it and Nick, on the other, knocked back through the sheer force of fright to the feet of a zombie who didn’t have all intention to eat the both of them like a midnight snack though, truth to be told, Henry wouldn’t have doubted Leonard to try considering their last encounter had him nearly squeezing Leonard’s head off of his shoulders. No, Henry still didn’t like the idea that Leonard had been some ever-present reminder that he had once let the Rot into the city, but Leonard at this point was hardly the one to be concerned about, Henry too tired - too exhausted - to deal with someone that was, more or less, on their side.

At the very least, he was on the side of his brother’s and if that was what he would have to rely on, he would have to. The circumstances of their current venture, unintended as it was, were far greater than a personal vendetta against a zombified member of the paparazzi who, in Henry’s moment of being outed for the super being he was, met a swift end by the very Rot that infected this place.

“None,” Henry said, shaking his head. “No discernable reason whatsoever and not me - for once.” He had been there after all, Nick, and though there might have been little to do at the time - Henry couldn’t remember the bits and pieces aside from the help of a cousin he no longer saw nor could say wore the mantle of a mutant ninja anymore - he did know how things had turned out. The Rot had been put back in its place, his apartment had been cleaned and decontaminated, and while Henry started the juggle that his life would ultimately become, what had come of the Mutant Growth Hormone was left to the pages of “Weird Shit That Happens in San Francisco” along with everything else that had ultimately come from someone using magics they had no business attempting to.

“I see they brought proper company with you,” Henry said, all but pointing at Leonard while he surveyed the current surroundings. Maybe it had been some sort of office or maybe the cafeteria that belonged to one, but it was hardly a place that Henry thought he’d find a renegade, somehow salvaged from the destruction and not found by survivors that might have come through, Snickers bar; but oh, did it sound good.

Still, for the moment, it seemed silent and Henry had no intention on breaking that as he laid himself out across one of the more well-put together and somehow still standing tables, long limbs all but draping over the sides like some sacrificial lamb to the slaughter of the underworld - all despair and no hope. It was there though. Somewhere in his mind he knew that whatever this was would come to pass - be it in the reversal of whatever magics had ultimately trapped them in this place or finding a way to do it themselves though, suffice to say, he knew his power to be limited at best.

“I never want flies in my apartment again,” he mused, staring up at the ceiling. It was better than, for the moment, staring at anything else - even the backs of his eyelids.

The relief in Nick’s face was apparent, easily seen, from anyone who had eyes and a couple brain cells to rub together. It wasn’t as though he was lacking company even with Leonard there but the idea that he wasn’t just some random guy who happened to get stuck in this was enough to make him feel a little bit better about it. A little bit less alone. All he had was the accompaniment of the living wall of undead, decaying flesh and the new life choice of just talking through everything even if most of the time it was under his breath or a conversation with the currently, heavily distracted zombie that had found his way there as well. It really was the only way that he could deal with the endless noise.

Nick wasn’t thinking of the last time they had seen each other, prior to their “birthday”. The other time. When Henry seemed bent on answers and Nick was not being as forthcoming or cooperative as he wanted him to be. It’d been months since they had a conversation but there was really one thing that Nick really knew he couldn’t do. Hold grudges. Things changed, people changed...Henry had gone through something profound, he wouldn’t have argued that. Or Henry didn’t believe he had gone through something profound but Nick had assumed death to be something profound or traumatic.

Or a little bit of both.

But truthfully, in the same sense that he thought of the relationship chasm he found himself with in relationships with his own family, Nick didn’t try to push. He didn’t butt himself into something that he didn’t belong in. He would have found a way back when the time called for it, if it ever did. Or he would just go on to live his own life. He was a ghost in a sense.

“I mean, we both know it was completely at random.” Nick mused as he stood there and wrapped his hands around the bag strap as a reflex to make himself feel grounded. Less like he was on a trip to a fucked up Wonderland filled with death. He barely motioned back to Leonard when he was mentioned. “Yeah, thank fuck. I wouldn’t actually survive a zombie apocalypse and I don’t do enough cardio to keep running.”

Nick had walked over to a wall before sitting down, putting his bag into his lap to sift through the things he had stuffed in his bag before he pulled out one of the granola bars he had stashed in there to get him through the night shift and periodically snacked on to keep his energy up. He watched Henry for a moment as the granola bar popped open, tearing off a piece. “Flies find their ways into everything, Henry. Whether we want them to or not.”

“You know which flies I’m talking about,” Henry said, turning his head to look over to Leonard, “or rather he knows which flies I’m talking about.” It was perhaps rude to flies to suggest that they were anything like the ones that had all but spun the heads of a few unsuspecting victims right off of their shoulders, but they were the closest representation that he had to explain the things. The differences were many, but they were still pests, they were still dangerous in a putrid sort of way, and decomposition came about in some part because of them. It just wasn’t as horrific as it was in the Rot; but rather than focus on such a thing as incessant buzzing in the air, filtered into his ears like a maddening sound on decrepit wind, Henry turned his head back up to stare at the ceiling.

“It’s always magic though,” he pointed out as if there was no changing his mind on it. While there were some things that could be associated to time travel, walking along strings of varying existences that were sometimes very close to reality or vastly difference, it was hard to say that this was the work solely of errant happenings in life or even some demonic disease of gangrenous form and destructive function. Magic always had a hand in things, even if it was magic of the known and natural universe.

“Which is probably why none of mine works.” Even with the means to reach into significant magical powers - the occultism for the eldritch lore, the bracelet for that from the depths of Hell, and the mark of the Outsider for those far less known in San Francisco unless someone stuck their nose into a video game for a number of hours - none of them were responding, and as if to make a show of it, he sat up and attempted to bring rise to a swarm of rats. What happened wasn’t the cannibalistic solidified shadows that would, frankly, have been a help to go after the undead around them. What did was a small puff of smoke, dispersing in the air and disappearing into the darkness around them, the only scurrying to be heard coming from everything going on outside - whatever that might have been.

He spied the granola bar - no, it didn’t seem attractive an eating option between the potential noise and the fact it wasn’t something that cooperated with the symbiote’s particular diet, but for the moment, Henry was content to ignore it. There was so much more going on.

Nick felt apprehensive to admit that: yes, he did know what flies he was talking about. But no, he wasn’t going to argue with anything that Henry said because either way it went...all of this was just a reminder of the past that Nick did his best to forget even if he did live with the constant reminder. He didn’t go around admitting that he knew it was a soft-spot for Henry but he did have a soft spot for anyone who decided he could help them and Nick wasn’t the type to turn anyone away. It had been ingrained in him not to be the person to not help people within his ability to do so.

Especially since there were so many times it had not been in his ability to do anything. Nick didn’t try to boast himself as some kind of heroic figure that lived in San Francisco. It was already a repeated behavior of his to avoid situations and he felt more secure in doing so. Even if Klaus didn’t have the same sort of mentality as he did when it came to things that came up, constantly walking straight into danger but being more of a casual observer than an active figure. Nick looked over to Leonard who mumbled something under his breath.

“He knows,” Nick said, softly as he idly chewed on a corner of his granola bar. “I know.” This place was bleak. The air carried a weight to it, a smell that most people would be sick of if they caught a whiff of it and yet Nick just sat back on the floor as if he was just trying to find any reasonable excuse to fall asleep right now. He came up with none that didn’t include putting his care in the responsibility of Henry and Leonard and they truly didn’t need the burden right at that moment. Nick wasn’t even sure he’d wake up if he went to sleep.

The constant litany of noises that seemed to be all around them continued, little sounds. Sounds that were easily ignorable if Nick really didn’t want to be in a position where he was constantly on edge. Even though it was difficult to break out of that mentality when all they had was their paranoia here. “I wouldn’t really know about the magic part,” he did a little flick of his wrist, mimicking dozens of times he had seen magic being used in the media. Magic wasn’t something that was in the realm of knowledge, despite seeing the dead. He classified that, merely, as being witness to something otherworldly and supernatural. “I can still understand Leonard...and other things, which is just as creepy as you would think it is. Everything I’ve heard has something to do with hunger and a severe lack of intelligence. I’d think it has to do with the state of decay everything is in and...you know, being undead.”

Nick shifted where he was sitting, trying to get as comfortable as he could get before he decided it was a fool’s errand in some way before stuffing the rest of his granola bar away in his bag. Nick thought, strategically in his mind, about what he wanted to say next as he struggled to get to his feet and felt one of his knees feel like it pulled, a grimace on his face as he straightened his back. He stepped forward to where Henry was laying on the table before placing the granola bar next to him. “At least we don’t have to worry about the flies back in San Francisco if...when we get back.”

“It isn’t even an inherently bad force,” Henry said, shaking his head. Death was natural. The Rot was natural. All of it was necessary to the ebb and flow of life as they knew it, but in this place - this horrific nightmare world of death stench and decay - everything was out of balance, manipulated to throw the Rot at the height of progression while the others were whittled away, with the Red and the Green unable to do much more than secure themselves away in fortified strongholds thanks to those who served as avatars for their cause. The rest had been forced to survive and the rest, as it seemed, failed to do so.

And then they had arrived - not to turn the tides, not because something had happened that brought them there intentionally, but because someone, somewhere, could have done something they couldn’t comprehend or, in the more of idiotic moves, read some Latin out of a book that they didn’t understand and turned everything on its head.

But that was just a guess.

“So, I guess that means we have to figure out how to find a way back?” He said, adjusting his posture a bit to be more forthcoming with attempts to make a plan to get out of there - not that he was entirely sure where to begin with that. While dimensional travel was something he was generally familiar with, time travel might have played a part if this place was as far along in its deterioration as it seemed. It could have been a person, but then who would that person have been and if they were even in the Rot to begin with? It could have been a fluke thanks to a gem or the Nexus, but then again, it wasn’t like they had possession of those which only brought it back around to the first consideration. They definitely couldn’t fight their way through the hordes between the three of them - one zombie, two living - but sitting around seemed just as troublesome.

“I guess we should take turns getting some sleep first,” he said, shrugging his shoulders a little bit since it was the only certainty he had: They wouldn’t be able to do anything if they didn’t get some rest. He regarded Leonard. “Maybe except for you. I don’t exactly think zombies need rest.”

Nick fought the urge to say anything about a ‘bad force’, he didn’t perceive it as anything that could be used in a good sense. Leonard was proof of that in his eyes and he didn’t argue with that fact nor the fact that this wasn’t exactly a normal place to find themselves in. But it wasn’t as much of a nightmare as it could have been. It could have been much worse, instead of the symphony of sounds filling the air when it came to the noises the undead said it could have been the sounds of the incorporal ones screaming in his ears, making this entire place unbearable but luckily it seemed more vacant on the ghost end of things. They weren’t so lucky when it came to the mutated part of things and that was something they could all face together.

“It’s...inherently not good that we ended up here without some kind of answer as to why we just showed up here.” Nick didn’t want to start the eternal debate about death that he could get into, surrounded by it and with someone who had previously died before versus someone who worked with it and saw the people whose death had come for on a nearly daily basis. He didn’t try to understand any of it. Not in the dying sense of things but when it came to the things that he could put some thought into he didn’t make the attempt to shy away from it too much.

He had fixed his glasses, pushing them up the ridge of his nose when Henry suggested that they go ahead and try to figure a way back. Even though he had no idea where to start in that fashion, he didn’t exactly do ‘interdimensional’ often. It wasn’t in his realm of understanding not that he could say he was someone who dealt only with the things that someone could prove with the scientific process, after all he had been dealing with the supernatural for the last two years. Nick took a deep breath as he regarded the suggestion.

“Probably, I’m not exactly sure where we’d start with figuring out how to get back. It might have to be that we have to figure out how we got here in the first place,” Nick mused loudly before he went to go sit at a table while he tried to go over what he did differently that day that could have caused something like this to happen to him. But nothing sprung to mind.

The indignant, puzzled look that came across his face wasn’t on purpose in his eyes. “You can go to sleep first,” Nick folded his arms in front of his chest. He didn’t want to seem like it wasn’t up for discussion between the both of them but he did have his own concerns and he was doing his best to hide his own relief that there was someone here he did have an established rapport with that only he could understand, it made things difficult when he had to speak for two people. Leonard shifted where he was standing. “Len’s going to go look around the area and keep an eye out for us anyway. There’s some benefits to being undead.”

There was nothing that Henry actually trusted about Leonard - not because he was a zombie when Henry had met quite a few terrible creatures in his lifetime as a superhero and then some, but because of how he had been formed, body twisted and life lost thanks to something that Henry didn’t have any control over. Sure, he could have not eaten and maybe he would have avoided whatever twisted cruelty imposed on him that allowed Sethe to try and use him as a portal to San Francisco, but that was going against everything in his body that had naturally said “you need to eat” and there had been no telling that it would have gone so poorly; and still, he had been responsible for it in a sense. No, he didn’t feel guilty about it - not beyond what might have been reasonable for someone with some humane balance to his being - but he knew well enough he had facilitated it and the push to remove him from the scene was alive and well, however not acted upon.

Not here, not now, perhaps not again, but especially not here where zombies were more the majority than living, breathing human beings were.

So he didn’t say much of anything when Leonard had taken his leave to check out what was going on, who was around and if trouble was going to be knocking on their doorstep, perhaps heralded by the sounds that were swarming or perhaps not even apt to bother with those inside, but then again, it would’ve been fairly unnatural for a zombie to not want human flesh just as it was unnatural for the Rot not to overtake the living. It was what it fed on - no death without life and no life without death. The parliaments simply made it a bit more extraordinary a concept than the everyday influence any of them had on life as they knew it - at least in a San Francisco that wasn’t overrun with Death.

There was no getting comfortable while laid out on the table, Henry getting himself up so he could take a seat properly. An elbow propped his head up by his chin, the other wrapping around the base of it that sat against its top; it wasn’t the best sleeping position, but he wasn’t even sure he would be able to doze off in the first place. Zombies, after all, weren’t his usual accompaniment to the depths of Limbo and they didn’t scream quite like banshees or the nightgaunts stuck in the Darkforce Dimension and, as for the other dimensional voids he could find ways to navigate, there were beings there that were simply silent - a scarier concept in a place like this where no one could be sure if they were being stalked and Henry himself was without the significant magical defenses he could normally call upon.

“Huh,” he commented about the benefits of being dead. “I suppose so.” Leonard, however, was a different kind of dead than Henry had been, one corporeal while the other was decided not unless there was someone there to put solidity to the form left behind.

But exhaustion, lack of sustenance, his own shrinking ego in the face of something he had personal experience with both as a ghost and as an unwitting portal for the horrors within to emerge made sleep a promising option. Maybe he would wake up more rested, less tired, and charged up for the possibility that they would have to go out into the great beyond of the building they were in to figure out not only what had caused this, but how to get back.

“Just a half hour,” he said, shoulders slumping a little bit before he folded his arms together for some sort of makeshift pillow, not unlike someone who might have fallen asleep in class one too many times. “That’s all I’ll need and then we can get going.”

That was all, he anticipated, he would even be able to get.