Chapter Text
It was almost like a normal day - a normal night, actually, Dan thought. Returning from the hospital to his house in the dark, stumbling for the door and fumbling with the keys, body aching from exhaustion. The sound of the inner mechanism of the lock clicking out of place was one Dan had heard so many times before, and the steps through the doorway and into his home happened without thought. It was normal, dragging himself back home like this.
Except he wasn’t coming from a day at work, and his body ached from more than just the exhaustion of a hospital shift. He’d been at the hospital for 24 hours, longer than any shift he’d ever worked by a mile, because he hadn’t been taking care of patients at all. He’d been the patient; they’d kept him overnight after — well, after it all happened.
The illusion of normalcy shattered as Dan stood in the dark of his home, the keys still in the open door behind him. He didn’t want to think about what had happened a little over a day prior - only a day? Dan thought, shocked - but it seemed he had no say in the matter. It washed over him as he stood, frozen, in the doorway. Memories flashed through his mind quickly, barely lasting more than a moment as Dan tried fruitlessly to shove them back down: the horrible sight of the dead Dean Halsey brought back to life, Hill’s decapitated head taunting them, the disfigured forms of the reanimated undead in the morgue, the blood, the gore, the horrible, gruesome reality he’s lived.
And of course, Meg: strapped to a mortuary stretcher, subjected to the horrors of Hill’s reanimated head, hurting, screaming, suffocating.
It was as if someone were playing a convenient recap in his mind, offering the highlight reel in case anyone had missed this week’s latest installment of “Massachusetts Med Student’s Life Goes Entirely to Shit!”. Dan saw it all again in quick, horrid succession, though he needed no recap. He’d lived it, after all, nightmarish as it was, and hadn’t known freedom from the barrage of grotesque memories since.
It was just one more flood of memories like countless others he’d experienced during his stay at the hospital, but something about being back in his house made it worse. He could see, underneath the horrors of the past few days, the life Before: Meg alive and well, there in his apartment, laughing and studying and loving him. But the image of her bloodied and still in the hospital bed was superimposed overtop of the darkened apartment like a ghastly apparition.
It was suddenly all too much. Dan felt the hot pressure of bile rising in his throat and he half ran, half fell through the darkened halls towards the bathroom. He slammed open the door and fell to his knees in front of the toilet, ignoring the agonizing jolt it sent through his body. He leaned over the porcelain bowl just in time to cough up a mouthful of bile.
He gripped the edge of the toilet as his body continued to be wracked with painful retching, as though he could vomit out the memories and be free from it all.
Of course, Dan knew he would find no such freedom. There was no cure in his sickness, no relief - just the disgusting burning sensation of his body uselessly seeking to expel something from nothing.
The empty stomach, when prompted to empty itself still further, has nothing left and so goes one step back in the system. Bile is drawn up from the gallbladder, an affront to the intended bodily order. It’s an inherently unpleasant indicator that something is wrong. Bile wasn’t supposed to flow freely towards the stomach and out of the body, instead intended to aid in the breaking down of fatty acids, to serve a purpose, to stay in it’s natural place and do it’s job.
Dan’s mind hazily recalled all of this as he threw up, his body refusing to comply with the knowledge that it wasn’t supposed to be doing what it was. The offending substance was bitter and acidic, burning up his throat and into his nose as he retched. If there had been any lights on, Dan knew, the acrid liquid he was expelling would have been a bright, almost neon yellow green color. He half expected it to glow as it burned its way out of him, that sickly, unnatural green he didn’t think he would ever be able to shake from his mind.
Of course, there was no glow. This was no scientific genius; it was a painful, entirely human suffering, no experimentation required.
By the time the vomiting had faded to dry heaving and then to choking gasps for air, Dan was a wreck. A string of spit clung to his chin, dripping down into the toilet below. His body was covered with a sheen sweat, his nose and eyes dripping from the strain.
He rested his arm against the cool porcelain, ignoring the small part of his brain that screamed out about the unsanitary nature of the position. It seemed silly to worry about something like that, after all he’d been through. He pressed his cheek pressed flush against his arm, breathing heavily. Dan used his other arm, which suddenly felt as though it weighed a ton, to reach for a handful of toilet paper to wipe his face.
He cleaned away the the spit and the snot and the tears, each motion requiring more effort than it had any right to. It was as though this had been the last straw, and his already exhausted body had finally reached its breaking point.
With a shaky exhale, Dan threw the disgusting wad of toilet paper into the bowl. He was tired down to the bone, down even further than that, he thought, to the marrow. Or to whatever exactly it was that they failed to bring back when people were reanimated, his mind offered - a soul, an essence, a consciousness.
He shoved the thought away, desperate to avoid another onslaught of memories. He couldn’t handle another round of disturbing images; he could barely handle anything, in that moment.
Dan allowed his eyes to flutter closed as he tried to refocus himself, breathing in deeply. In and out, slow and deliberate. Even that, the simple act of breathing, was a struggle.
He needed to sleep. He knew that. He half wondered if he could sleep there, kneeling on the floor with his face nearly in the toilet, instead of having to move. The prospect of forcing his body back into motion and getting up felt Herculean. But the screaming in his limbs from the uncomfortable position and the earlier impact with the tile floor which had brought him there answered his question with a clear resounding no.
After a few moments of shaky deep breaths, Dan forced his head off from his arm, feeling like his body was full of sand. He dragged himself to his feet, almost lost his balance, and fell against the sink for support. Another set of deep breaths at the sink, and he made another attempt at walking.
He didn’t fall over, but each step was a struggle. Every part of him was drained, exhausted and aching in ways he had never experienced before and hoped never to again, although somehow he doubted he would be so lucky.
He’d left the door to his house open when he’d ran for the bathroom, and although he was too tired to feel any sort of fear about it, he forced himself to go through the motions of retrieving his keys and locking the door anyways. He did it without thought, with the practiced ease of someone doing a series of actions they’d preformed hundreds of times before. The familiarity he’d recognized earlier had returned - felt only by his physical body, as his mind was painfully aware of all that had changed - and it carried his stumbling form through the dark.
He was unaware of what exactly his body was doing until he felt the cool press of the doorknob against his open palm. He started, momentarily confused to find himself outside of his bedroom door.
Of course. Sleep.
But standing there, in front of his room, Dan suddenly felt more awake than he had in hours. His grip on the doorknob tightened, knuckles glowing white in the moonlight from the window at the end of the hall.
He didn’t want to go in, but his body was still functioning out of habit, so the door was opening before Dan was fully conscious that he’d made a move at all.
Dan released his grip on the doorknob and allowed the door to swing fully open, colliding with the wall on the other side with a dull thud.
He could see into his room, looking just as he had left it. The glow of the moon shone upon his bed, unmade and empty.
All he could see was himself in bed with Meg - Meg from Before. Asking her to stay the night, or studying, or doing some stupid bit to make her laugh, or even just napping together. Holding her - God, how many times had he held her in that bed? How many hours had they spent there? They would never spend any time together there again - there or anywhere. Dan hadn’t known that the last time they’d been in that bed together had been the last time. He wished, wildly, that he would’ve convinced her to stay the night, or even to stay just for another hour. Another ten minutes. There would be no more another anything now
His earlier exhaustion was entirely gone, his body breaking out in a cold sweat as adrenaline flooded his system. He could feel, vaguely, the threat of throwing up again.
“Fuck,” he breathed, squeezing his eyes closed.
His breathing was becoming labored, and he wondered if he might fall down. He should sit, the rational part of himself knew, but he doubted he would be able to get back up, so he opted to just stand: rigid, eyes closed, fists tight at his side, struggling to even out his breathing and swallow down the bile trying to force itself up his throat.
It took several minutes of this struggle for him to feel safe in opening his eyes. He averted his gaze from the bed, reaching for the door and slamming it closed. He breathed a sigh of relief when he could no longer see into the room, resting his forehead against the door.
Clearly, he wouldn’t be sleeping in his bed, if he was going to sleep at all that night.
He pulled away from the door and fled towards the living room, thinking that he could sleep on the couch, but realized there were no fewer haunting memories there. Fight or flight carried him, unsteady, away from the couch and all the visions of Before that sat upon it in overlapping apparitions.
His feet led him to the relative safety of the kitchen, where he used the counter to ground himself. There were memories there, too, but it was manageable enough for him to stop and think.
He needed to sleep. He knew that, and he could feel the reactionary adrenaline already ebbing from his body. But trying to sleep in his bed would be - Dan shuddered, shaking his head as though it would clear the memories. No, the bed wasn’t an option. Neither was the couch. He could sleep on the kitchen floor, he supposed, glancing down at the ground. But even here, he could hear Meg’s voice, could see her sitting at the table, standing at the sink, complaining jokingly about his empty fridge or huge mess of dishes.
Where did that leave him, then?
He forced himself to focus, despite his brain feeling suddenly foggy and his body beginning to ache with than exhausted weight again.
If he couldn’t sleep in the kitchen, couldn’t sleep in his bed, couldn’t sleep on the couch...there was the bathroom, but Dan’s rational mind still insisted in reminding him how unclean that would be. There was Herbert’s room - he was still at the hospital, having very nearly been killed by his own scientific breakthroughs where Dan had only been mildly injured. But the though of going into his roommates room, of sleeping there, made Dan’s stomach flip with a dizzying mix of embarrassment, recognition of the lines that would cross, and the knowledge of how angry Herbert would be about it when he eventually got released from the hospital.
All that left Dan was the basement. The prospect wasn’t encouraging, as it was where the very science that had turned his life into a waking nightmare had all been carried out, but it was the only place he reasonably thought he could go to without feeling sick. Herbert would still be upset with him, most likely; even though Dan had become something of his partner, helping in the lab, it was still Herbert’s lab.
But Dan’s feet were already moving towards the entrance to the basement. Herbert would get over it. Hill had practically destroyed the place anyways, so it wasn’t like there was anything for Dan to mess with even if he’d had the energy.
He didn’t bother to turn on any lights as he stumbled into the darkness. With his hands out in front of him, Dan navigated the cool cellar and made his way to an empty corner.
The exhaustion of earlier was back, and Dan didn’t care about the fact that he had no pillow or blanket, nor about the layer of grit and grime that clung to the basement’s floor. He sunk to the ground down the wall, leaning up against the corner, wrapped his arms around his knees, and passed out on the cold cement.