The Tale of Gerard Way

When Patrick woke the next morning to find that he had slept the whole night without being disturbed by Pete, he was jolted by concern, before he realised that it was probably because Frank had confined him to his coffin so he could take his brain activity readings overnight while he might be having the dreams again, at which point Patrick’s concern was quickly enveloped with unusual and unneeded jealousy.

He shook it off. None of them needed complications right now. This was crucial.

When he went back out, nobody was up as per usual, except there was the presence of Frank. Frank always had been an early riser.

“Morning, sunshine,” Frank greeted him with a smirk, obviously mocking his typical disgruntled morning expression.

Patrick gave him a small nod in reply, before asking, “What time did you get up?”

“Five. Felt the need to watch the readings live. This stuff is just fascinating.”

Patrick scowled at him, but it went unnoticed with Frank focusing intently on the readout screen. “You know this isn’t just one of your experiments, right? This is Pete we’re talking about.”

Frank looked up, a mixture of surprise and defence evident on his face. “Well, yeah, I know, it’s just—”

“Just what?”

Frank said nothing. That shut him up. Momentarily. “I didn’t mean anything by it, Patrick. You’re not a morning person,” Frank lamely tried to excuse himself. Rage began to bubble up inside Patrick at Frank’s attitude. “Patrick. Don’t get mad. You know as well as I do that I wouldn’t want to hurt Pete. We were friends too, back at the Academy, Patrick.”

Patrick stopped and thought for a second, which was apparently all he needed to calm himself down. Frank was right. And another note: Frank could still read him like a book, after all these years.

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. I’m really not a morning person, am I?”

Frank just laughed slightly, a light-hearted chuckle that was his signature, and went back to the screen, taking notes as he went along.

“I was looking at the scripts last night. I read through all the notes. I’m sure one of them was yours,” Patrick said curiously.

“Yeah – on the unknown passage, right?” Patrick nodded. “That part fascinated me. I just had to try to explain why the rest of the book could be translated into near-perfect English sense but that part couldn’t. You flunked Latin, right?” Patrick nodded again. It was too early for talking on his part. “Well, the thing is about ancient Latin scripts, the more literate the person who wrote them, the easier they are to translate, because modern languages developed from the proper form of Latin. The scripts that were written out in lead onto fabric were difficult to translate because most of the words that lower-class people used those days didn’t end up being developed into more modern languages, and most of those words don’t even mean anything nowadays.”

“So you think that passage was written by, I don’t know, a villager or something?"

Frank chuckled again and stood up, gesticulating now, a sign that he was really getting onto something he was excited about. “Yeah, something like that. It definitely wasn’t written by the person who wrote the rest of it. Another thing: we can’t tell at a glance, but that passage is in a completely different handwriting, which doesn’t even happen that often in Latin scripts. Everything is usually written in the same style, it’s just all so efficient. It just looks as if the person who wrote that passage wasn’t even trying.”

Patrick made a noise that he hoped sounded like he was fascinated, which he truly was, honestly, it was just that it was too fucking early (late?) and he was yet to have coffee. This in mind, he started brewing; Frank must have made some the moment he was up, because it was already cold.

As Patrick removed the pot, he was startled by a deafening screech from behind him. The coffee pot flew from his hand and smashed on the stone floor; Patrick jumped back from the sound in reflex and stood on a particularly sharp piece of glass from the smashed pot, yelping as the shard pierced the skin of his bare foot. Frank leapt back from the source of the noise too, albeit more gracefully than Patrick had been able. The sound continued to reverberate, but as Patrick came back to his senses and out of his panic, he recognised the sound as a scream. It had lowered slightly in pitch, and he could hear small gasps of breath in between the bouts of petrified screeching.

And it was coming from the casket.

He sprinted to the other side of the room and pulled open the lid to reveal a thrashing, bewildered but still unconscious Pete. Tears were streaming down his face and in between the noise he was gasping out a litany of, “No, no, no.” His fists crunched into the sides of the casket, leaving cracks in the expensive woodwork, but Patrick didn’t give a shit, even though he paid for it. He pressed a palm hard to Pete’s chest, who seemed to calm momentarily, giving Patrick the opportunity to stroke his hair soothingly and move his other hand, from his chest, up to his face to wipe away the tears that were flowing freely. Pete calmed, after a lot of soothing and calming words, still gasping erratically. Eventually, his eyes blinked open. It was a horrible sight to see – bloodshot, his pupils fully dilated, making his eyes appear almost totally black, but not in the usual frightening way that they did when he was angry or hungry or anything else. He was terrified. Patrick had never seen him more scared in his life; Pete wasn’t this terrified when he was in the throes of the disease, in the knowledge that he would be condemned forever as he turned, slowly and painfully. Patrick didn’t think there was anything more terrifying than that, not before now.

When Pete finally managed to regulate his breathing, which in any case shouldn’t technically be helping, he appeared to go numb, the only sign of his distress being the tears still falling freely down his face. His expression was totally blank; for a few moments, Patrick was terrified that whatever had happened had killed him. It was like he had gone totally numb. But then he blinked a few times, hiccupped a few times as if words were stuck at the back of his throat that he couldn’t get out, and began to sob, a weak, hopeless gurgle that made Patrick’s chest ache.

Patrick couldn’t stand it. He lifted Pete into a sitting position with ease and held him tightly in his arms, stroking his back soothingly in a way he wouldn’t have done with anyone else. He didn’t think it was possible for him to feel more protective of Pete than he did now. Pete started to babble into Patrick’s shoulder, trying to say something, but Patrick just hushed him.

“Shh, it’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it right now. Relax, Pete.” Pete appeared to listen to Patrick’s advice, and the tension drained out of his body. He went almost completely limp – if he wasn’t still whimpering quietly as he cried Patrick might have thought he was unconscious.

Eventually, Pete was determined to say something. “I don’t want to go to sleep again. I don’t want to go back to sleep, not ever again, Patrick. Don’t make me go back to sleep.” Pete pulled back to look Patrick deeply in the eyes. “Promise me you won’t make me go to sleep again.”

Patrick gave Pete a sympathetic expression and stroked through the black bang that was hanging down over one of his eyes. “You don’t have to sleep again today, Pete.”

“No,” he complained, “No, you can’t ever make me. Never again. I’ll never go back there, ever.”

“You’ll have to sleep again at some point, Pete. Just not today.” This seemed to calm Pete momentarily, until the realisation of the first thing he had said sunk into Pete’s reality and his body was once again wracked with sobs. He buried his face into Patrick’s neck again to muffle the sound, as if he was ashamed of it.

Patrick strained his neck to look at Frank, being careful not to detach himself from Pete’s grip in any way, and Frank was standing in the same place he was when he first jumped back from the noise. He looked shocked, but he wasn’t looking at Pete. He was looking at the screen.

“Frank?”

He said nothing; glancing up at Patrick once with shock in his eyes, before looking back at the monitor. He approached it cautiously, as if something might leap out of the screen, and pressed a few buttons carefully. There was some cheerful bleeping from Frank’s direction as he ran over the diagnostics again.

“Frank.” This time he looked around and shook his head, an indication that he had no idea what just happened. That was never good.

- - - - - - - - - -

“Pete.”

Patrick’s room was dimly lit. Pete seemed to feel more uncomfortable the more light there was. If Pete was any other vampire, this would be passed off as being normal, but Pete always wanted to be among bright lights. Ever since he was infected, it was like the light was his security blanket – something that reminded him who he really was, reminded him not to follow his instincts, that he wasn’t like all the others. Now though, he sat in the dark, refusing to come out. Patrick had to follow him in. He wasn’t going to leave him alone, no matter how much Pete wanted him to.

“Pete?” Patrick tried with a more concerned tone this time. Maybe if he tried to reassure Pete that he was only worried about him, Pete would say open up to him. Not that was likely for him in any circumstance. “Come on, Pete. You can’t do this. You can’t--”

“Can’t what?” Pete snapped, but Patrick wasn’t complaining, because at least it was words. “You said I didn’t have to talk about it.”

“I didn’t want to make you open up about it when it was so fresh in your mind, Pete, you know that’s the rule. And I’m not asking you to open up completely, I just want to know what happened. I need to know.”

“Lost your genius, have you?” Pete snarled, baring his teeth. They grew in length slightly, maybe in warning, Patrick wasn’t sure, but nor was he scared. He would know what to do if Pete lashed out. Patrick didn’t say anything back, and Pete took this as an opportunity to continue. “I had a fucking nightmare again, Patrick. Or, I don’t know – a fucking ‘night terror’ or whatever the hell you call it,” he said, and his posture became less aggressive at the end of the sentence, his tone more sedated.

Before Patrick had the chance to say anything else, Pete was sobbing again. It was less violent than before, but it made Patrick’s heart break so much more. It was like Pete just didn’t have the energy anymore. Patrick would rather see Pete struggle against the horrors in his life than let them exhaust him, allow himself to give in to them.

Patrick moved to where Pete was sitting on his bed and sat beside him. “Hey, Pete? I didn’t mean I wanted you to go into detail. You don’t have to, but...” Patrick trailed off, unsure as to whether or not the end of the sentence would go down well.

“But I can,” came the response. It was a statement, not a question. “I know. I know I can tell you anything, talk to you about anything. It’s just that sometimes I won’t let me.”

Patrick nodded sympathetically. “Yeah. I haven’t lost enough of my genius to forget that.”

Pete paused for a moment, chuckling half-heartedly in the way that he knew made Patrick’s heart ache again, but in a good way – it was rare but comforting to hear Pete laugh, for all of them – and reached over for the box of tissues to dry his cheeks. The tissue ended up crumpled in his hand, a tiny, soggy ball under the pressure of his powerful muscles. “What if I could show you what happened?”

Patrick’s brow furrowed of its own accord. “How do you mean?”

“Like—I don’t know, like if I drew it again, or something. I don’t know if I could get it right, but then, I could think it over away from you, while I drew it, instead of...” Pete stopped for a moment, gasped a small breath that indicated he was close to bursting into tears again. “Instead of breaking down in front of you.”

Maybe, Patrick thought, after all this time of trying to make Pete comfortable with opening up and releasing all the pent-up frustration and sadness that welled inside him - one of the more nasty things included in the package of being a vampire – it just wasn’t going to happen. It disappointed him to think that, but it was probably true. Vampires were pretty much completely emotionally solitary, in general, and there wasn’t really any logical reason why Pete would be any different from the rest – another fact that Patrick didn’t like to admit. “Yeah. You could do that.”

His acceptance seemed to encourage Pete, and the corner of his mouth turned up, so slightly and only for less than a second, but it stood out clearly to Patrick’s eyes. Just that tiny quirk made Patrick’s entire face light up, his smile stretching from ear to ear. At this, Pete smiled again, but this time only with his eyes.

It was more than enough.

- - - - - - - - - -

After a week of laboratory experimentation on Pete’s psyche and still gaining no new information from it, Patrick put his foot down. They were not getting anywhere in the direction they wanted to be moving in and all they were achieving was making Pete’s life that little bit worse on him, so they were going to stop. End of.

In his opinion, the most useful things were Pete’s drawings. They were sketchy at best, but they told Patrick enough. The first few were just line drawings by pencil, mostly outlines and they missed out most of the detail. They were of seemingly normal domestic situations, but under more high-class circumstances, all of Way – there was one of him sitting in an armchair reading a book, but the title couldn’t be made out (“I wasn’t exactly concentrating on what he was reading, ‘Trick. Not when he was right there.”), one of him standing, in a large brick hall, talking to outside of the picture, looking out of the drawing at Patrick, holding what looked like a bow with a bunch of arrows held together in the fist of his other hand. The last of the fairly normal pictures was of him eating at the head of a grand dining table in the same church-like setting that Pete had described to Patrick – eating, which wasn’t normal at all. Patrick was lost in thought by the time he was halfway through studying that picture – his mind was running on the assumption that Gerard Way was a real person, and that everything that the book said was true – and the thought began to irritate his mind that this man really was unlike any other vampire in known history.

Pete took plenty of opportunities to remind Patrick that, in all of his dreams, he felt like he was being carried around in the body of someone else, as if he was looking through someone else’s eyes. Pete was somehow connected to another vampire – it was the only logical explanation. The idea fascinated him – and Frank too, when Patrick explained his theory to him – to think that this kind of high-resolution connection could exist between the minds of two people. It wasn’t entirely inconceivable – ever since he had joined the Academy of the paranormal, Patrick had been willing to believe anything. His first policy was that, in general, everything in the paranormal world was true until proven false.

This in mind, Patrick desperately needed to know how this was happening and, after further thought and loss of sleep, began to wonder how meeting such a man as Gerard Way could benefit paranormal science. If he was the first ever vampire, as the book told, he had to hold the secret to a cure. He just had to.

Patrick ended up holding his thoughts back several times before he got ahead of himself, because his second policy was this: optimism is a very, very, inconsolably bad thing.

So, with the whole team resolved to leave Pete and his troubles alone so that he could deal with them himself if he needed to, for now, they went back on patrol duty on a regular basis. Frank took the liberty of coming along with them most days, which was often not a very good thing – he might be one of the biggest geniuses in the business, but he was a coward when faced with a vampire that wasn’t sedated and laid out on a lab table. He refused to be separated from the stronger, in terms of combat, members of the team – namely Pete and Andy – and when they weren’t on patrol duty, he reluctantly went out with Patrick, determined not to lose his cool. For such a clever dude, he could come across as really, truly stupid sometimes.

One of the first vampire-related issues of Saint Paul that was on the team’s to-do list was long past the point of being available to solve; a group of vicious members of the Punk clan had decided it might be fun to capture a group of young, fleshy human girls from a local nightclub, and they had long decided to be through with them and had, as far as Patrick could tell, killed them all. Frank and Pete both had moments of guilt for letting this happen – although Pete’s was definitely more subtle, almost unnoticeable, but was most definitely still there – but Patrick snapped them back to their senses by explaining, slightly untruthfully, that it was unlikely they would have been able to do anything about it anyway. It seemed to stop them both from thinking so loudly about it all the time.

Second on the list was a general clean-up that they were almost constantly doing, and it would be the understatement of the century to say that they were behind on that. For almost 14 hours straight, they were all on duty searching for ‘misbehaviour’ in vampires of all descents, which, to be fair, wasn’t very difficult to find. Over that period, Patrick felt like he was on a roll – he had managed to divert about 5 groups of about 10 away from the busier places uptown and away from their potential victims single-handedly without getting anyone hurt and without causing any bursts of rage from anybody, and he had only just managed to not let himself get killed while attempting to slay 6 (or was it 7?) vampires, 4 of which attempts were successful. This was, yet again, single-handed. He was so proud of himself that for a moment he forgot all about Pete.

Everything had fallen back into the usual routine so well that he thought, for quite some time, that Pete’s concerns for himself and for the dreams he was having had vanished too. That was, until Patrick woke up one day to get a drink of water and some Tylenol for the terrible headache that had come on and he heard soft whimpering from inside the casket again.

He walked calmly over, taking a small stool from the breakfast bar in the kitchen area with him, and sat on it while he gently opened the lid. Pete’s expression was pained, but not in actual pain – it was more tired than anything, like he was just tired of being in the same position over and over again, like he was tired of the fear. His whimpers were constant, not growing or fading, and his body didn’t thrash like before, but his fingers and bare toes twitched slightly, his neck occasionally craning to the left as if he was trying to get more comfortable. It was like he wasn’t resisting anymore – he was just trying to sleep through it and wait for the terrors to pass.

For some unknown reason, Patrick couldn’t help himself from reaching out to stroke through Pete’s hair again. It was like instinct now; Pete had suffered from nightmares back when he was healthy, and this was always what Patrick did when that happened. As his fingers combed through the bang that was sliding down the side of Pete’s face, Pete seemed to calm slightly, and Patrick smiled. Touch had always been able to calm Pete from his nightmares back then too.

It was only momentary. As Patrick continued in the comforting motion, it was as if Pete was becoming numb to it again, like it was only a temporary solution, and he began to whimper again, almost exactly the same as before. The smile faded from Patrick’s face slowly, disappointedly, until his face was back into its default state – a fatigued, weary frown that creased his brows and wrinkled his forehead.

He went back to bed, deciding that waking Pete up would only end up worrying him more, and then neither of them would get their sleep.

Patrick had been wrong in his decision, because later in the day, the sleeping period, Pete’s whimpers developed into sobs, then into wails, and finally into shrieks, and Patrick fell asleep to the sound, bearing the hopeless feeling that there was nothing he could do about it.