Chapter Text
Legs was like a vampire in many ways- namely, the fact that he could rarely sleep. But unlike the vampires, he actually needed it in order to be remotely functional in the mornings.
Medicine helped. He'd managed to find a mixture that kept him down long enough to get a decent six hours, and, remarkably, he’d been able to find most of the ingredients in Oakhurst, with a little adjustment. It worked well, at least in the sense that it allowed his body to rest.
But it didn't stop the nightmares.
He often got the same ones, over and over. The sleeping drugs allowed him to see them through to their natural conclusion, but that hardly meant they brought him any closure.
They didn’t always happen in the same order. Some nights would start with something pleasant, and slowly pull the rug out from underneath him, others would just be memories and flashbacks. Tonight’s appetiser, however, was something a little more surreal.
Still, this was as familiar to him as anything. He knew this vision well, and greeted it like an old friend.
It started with knowing. Legundo knew exactly what was happening. He’d seen it happen too many times not to know.
He felt the pains in his abdomen first. He felt the stomach cramping and the nausea bubbling up. A lesser murderer would’ve mistaken it for food poisoning, but arsenic was his weapon of choice, as familiar to him as his scalpel or stethoscope. The misleading symptoms was why he’d found it so useful. Nobody would know until it was too late.
But he knew.
He smiled.
This was perfect.
He wondered if it was worse for him, knowing. Being able to pinpoint exactly which organs were failing, being able to tell exactly how long he had left, knowing it wasn’t enough to set any affairs in order, knowing that it won’t be peaceful or painless. He will die in agony. Not that he deserved anything better.
He decided that if knowing made it worse, then that was his just deserts for all the people who didn’t know. Who’d looked up at him and had smiled, thinking the doctor had come to help them. Who he’d smiled at back with kindness, who he’d touched the arms of gently and whispered to softly as he’d administered the injections and ran his checks and told in tones of safety and confidence that they were fine, that this will pass, that they’d be right as the summer rains after a few days of rest, and to call him if they needed anything more.
He’d seen young farmers with bright faces full of promise and eagerness thank him for giving them the boost they needed to get back to work. He’d seen elderly women, defenceless and weak, tell him that he was so sweet, that he made them feel so safe, that they reminded them of their sons who had moved to the capitol but still sent them letters and were visiting next week. He’d seen children looking up at him with wonder and admiration as told him that they wanted to be a doctor and help people, just like him when they grew up.
Their bodies all looked the same when he saw them again a day later.
Legundo took comfort in the fact that soon his body would also look like that. He’d soon be a cadaver on someone’s table. Just as pale and grey and lifeless. He’d be placed underground in some church’s graveyard, next to a monument to a god he never believed in, under a stone that read the name that so many people had trusted, and he’d have nothing left to do for anyone but slowly crumble into dust.
And he would be gone. And the world would be better for it.
He was never going to be a graceful thing, he thought as he doubled over on the toilet bowl expelled the contents of his lunch into the basin. His head was spinning, the vision in his one good eye was blurring, he knew that he should be feeling the confusion set in any time soon.
But this dream was different. He was going to Know what was happening. He was going to know everything that was going on until the bitter end.
Blood-filled diarrhoea. Watery vomit. He felt sympathy sink into his gut for whoever had to clean up his body. He wondered who it would be. If they’d cry when they saw him. He hoped they wouldn’t. As he could feel the dehydration taking over from the rapid fluid loss, sending him into hypovolemic shock, he knew he didn’t want anyone wasting any of their own water on him.
Some might’ve called this dream a nightmare, but Legundo found reassurance in the fact that he will not leave this earth without paying for his crimes. His mind had a sense of poetic justice, making him live through the thing he had put thousands of others through.
All he could hear was his tinnitus and the beating of his heart, getting slower and more irregular as the low blood pressure sent his pulse into arrhythmia.
He wondered dimly who could’ve done this. A victim? A friend? Himself?
He imagined the others had probably wondered similar things- “Who could’ve been cruel enough to do this to me? Who could possibly have that much coldness in their heart? What did I do to deserve any of this?”
At least he had the answer to the last question.
This was happening fast. Acute arsenic poisoning was always his way of working, it was swift and effective. It gave people less time to figure out what was happening and call for help.
And if they did- well, who would they call? A doctor?
He would’ve laughed at the bitter thought if the organ failure hadn’t just hit his lungs. He was fully slumped over, gripping the edge of the toilet seat and trying to push himself up into a sitting position, gasping for air, blood and excrement puddled across the tile floor.
Well, this isn’t very sterile, he thought.
And then he died.
And the dreams continued.
That was the only nightmarish thing about this vision. Legs hoped that when it was the real thing he wouldn’t find any dreams beyond. He found no comfort in the idea of heaven. A sweet finality to all of this was more than what he deserved.
Screams rang through his tinnitus, and flashes of red gunfire hit his eyelids. He clutched his bleeding face, screwing his up eyes to stop the blood flowing down into them as he stumbled around blindly. Rain hammered down onto his clothes. Voices called out to him through the cacophony, hands were on his back, shoving him away from a threat he couldn't see.
Someone was pushing him from behind, someone was grabbing him by the fabric of his sleeve, someone was yelling at him to run, but the mud pulled at his boots and threatened to drag him into a watery grave.
He was not a religious man. He did not believe in Hell. But Hell rained down around him all the same, as it did not care who or what believed in it.
He was lying face-down in pooling blood and mud.
An almost peaceful feeling washed over him as the sky crashed down around him, the realisation that this was what he deserved.
But was it, though? A quick, early death would be merciful to him, and he definitely didn’t deserve mercy. He deserved to feel the pain and suffering of it all. If it ended here, then he could be free. The world could be rid of him and everything he’d caused, but he would be done with the guilt and torment that he so desperately needed to feel. If there was any justice here, he should live and be forced to work for change and repentance.
But Legundo was a selfish man, and he lay there in the mud and the rain and gunfire and hoped for a death he didn’t deserve.
He felt the weight of the hands of every life he’d taken, the ghosts of the deaths he’d caused, push him further and further into the sodden ground. Dirty water was pouring into his mouth, his lungs, his eyes, up his nose, in the open wound on his face. He swallowed it gratefully.
"WE NEED A DOCTOR!"
Legs tried to call out, to let them know he was here, he was prepared to help, but breathing in caused him to cough up a liquid that tasted a lot like dirt and something metallic.
Oh. Right.
He needed a doctor.
Silly mistake. Ironic, really.
He lost consciousness a moment later.
“Stay with me. Stay with me, Legs. Stay- SOMEBODY HELP ME STOP THE BLEEDING!- you’re gonna be okay. I need you awake for me, okay? I need you to- SOMEBODY!”
He was dimly aware of someone shaking his shoulder, but everything happened in the distance, tangibility a far-off concept. The pain was so white-hot it was almost numbing.
Legs wanted to scream, to wake up from this horrible flashback, but the drugs held him under. The images just kept playing and playing and he was powerless to stop them.
“Just- lie still. It’s alright- SOMEBODY HELP ME!- It’s gonna be okay, you’re- SOMEBODY PLEASE! I NEED A DOCTOR!- you’re fine, okay? You’re gonna be- ANYBODY!!- It’s gonna be alright.”
His vision faded in and out. He felt soft cloths pressing hard into his face, warm streams of blood flowing from his open skin.
His mind was foggy with pain and confusion. He tried to make sense of his surroundings through it all. He was lying on his back. Yes- he knew that much. But he was moving- possibly being carried on a stretcher?
He drifted away.
“It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay, Doc. It’s gonna be- you’re gonna be fine. Someone’s coming.”
Sounds of shouting voices overlapped and were drowned by rain and banging. It was difficult to distinguish anything except desperate people and pain. He couldn’t see. Something- bandages, maybe?- was wrapped around his face. He couldn’t open his left eye- it felt like someone had driven a sledgehammer into the side of his head. He left his right eye closed and very quickly fell back out of consciousness.
“There’s no space- wh-what happened to all the beds-?“
“So many people-“
Legundo felt himself being set down on something cold and wet, with only a thin layer of fabric between it and his back.
“What happened-?“
“Bayonet, I think-“
“His face-“
“His eye-“
“Oh, God.”
Slowly, and very, very painfully he began to become aware of the sensations around him. Everything hurt. It felt like his skull had split open. Ringing pounded in his head, and muffled shouts and screams of pain and loud swearing surrounded him from everywhere, and the gunshots seemed far more distant. He might’ve been inside the medical tent, but it was hard to tell.
He groaned.
“I think he’s awake-“
“Stay with me, Doctor.”
Something rose up in his throat. With immense pain, he turned his head to the side and retched, feeling water and chunks of mud coming up through his mouth.
“Shh. Shh. Oh god. Oh god. Okay. You’re gonna be- COME QUICK, WE’VE GOT A- Okay. Just hold on, okay?“
Someone put a hand on his sweating forehead. Somebody was pressing a cloth onto his face. Somebody was wrapping something tight around his leg. Somebody was screaming in the distance.
He coughed and spluttered, writhing on the sheet of canvas, pain rising up to pacify his movements.
Desperate whispers happened in worlds above him.
“What’re we gonna do? The person best skilled enough to help him is-“
“Him. Ironic, isn’t it?”
“This is bad.”
“Keep pressure on it-“
”Doctor? We’re gonna get you through this, alright? Just hang in there.”
But all the doctor knew was pain.
Legundo sat up with a gasp.
He put a hand against the wall to steady himself, and blinked until his vision stopped spinning. He was breathing quickly and heavily. It took him a second to will his lungs to slow, and to finally register where he was.
He was in bed.
He was okay. He was safe.
Well, relatively speaking- Oakhurst was still Oakhurst, the realisation of which did not set the doctor’s mind at ease the way he would’ve liked.
He drearily pulled the covers off of him and stood up, going over to sit at his desk and pulling out one of his many notebooks. He needed to work on that sleeping mixture, find a way to make the dreams less potent, maybe there was something he could scavenge in the forest that could-
“Are you feeling alright, Doctor?”
Legundo let out a frustrated sigh, and stared down at his paper, willing this to be just a trick of his reeling brain, “I neither have time, nor energy to deal with this, Owen.”
“I can see that.”
“Where are you hiding? I’m not talking if I can’t see your face.”
He heard something soft bonking against wood, and looked up to see a bat hanging upside down from Legs’ outer windowsill, banging its head against the wooden fence as if knocking on a door.
But, soft! Legundo thought with disdained sarcasm, What light through yonder window breaks?
“Can I come in?” The bat asked in Owen’s voice.
“Stop that. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“Can’t transform back if I don’t have enough space. You gotta let me in if you wanna talk, Doc.”
“I literally never said I wanted to talk to you, Owen,” Legundo groaned and rubbed his forehead. His muscles were still sore from when he’d attacked him by the lake, “Why are you even here?”
“I was flying over Oakhurst when I heard screaming. I thought there might’ve finally been something fun happening in this godforsaken town.”
Legs was very much aware of his tendency to shout in his sleep when the nightmares got bad. It was partly the reason why he’d never taken a roommate.
He tried to hide his reddening face from the furry creature behind the wooden bars.
Despite the fact that the doctor knew that showing Owen his vulnerability was what he’d been trying to do for a while, he wished he’d been able to have more control over how he could’ve gone about it, but he supposed that would miss the point. Still, embarrassment was as irrational as anything, no matter how much as he’d hoped it would help the vampire to trust him.
None of it mattered, anyway. Owen had made it pretty clear the other day that he did not want the cure, and the doctor was beginning to get tired of this.
The bat stared at him through the window. It wasn’t fair that Legs couldn’t read Owen’s facial expressions when he was transformed.
“You know, if you were a vampire, you’d never have to sleep again. You could be free of all this.”
“Enough, Owen.”
“I’m only trying to help, Doctor.”
“Go. Away.”
There was a soft squeak from the Owen-bat, and with a flap of wings all that was left in Legs’ window was the slowly greying sky of early morning.
It was typical of Owen to show up and mess with his head when he was already feeling disoriented. Legs tried not to dwell on the fact he’d come here because he cared if Legs was hurt, even if that care only extended to amusement. He also tried not to think about how cute Owen looked as a bat, fluffy with wispy white curls and an adorable little squeak. Owen was important- that was as clear to him as anything- but catching feelings would only complicate things, especially with how tough it was proving to be to get the vampire on his side.
He decided he shouldn’t dwell on this. He needed some fresh air. He grabbed his coat.
“My gosh, ye look terrible, dont’cha know?” Renhardt stood behind the bar, cleaning the rim of a glass with a rag, “Care for a drink to forget ye troubles?”
“It’s nine in the morning, Ren!”
Ren just raised an eyebrow, a whimsical glint in his eye.
“You have a serious problem. Remind me to book you for a checkup,” Legs groaned and slumped on the bar. His nightmares had left him tired and shaken. He could really use some forgetting-juice.
“Ah, but dont’cha know, Dr Leg, ain’t alcohol the best anaesthetic ye doctors have discovered yet?” He proclaimed, “I could take all that pain away.”
Legs wagged a tired finger at the bartender, “Stop it. You’re a bad influence. You’re beginning to sound like Owen.”
Ren’s brow furrowed, “Oh, ye’ve been visited by that foul creature of the night, have ye?” He leaned in close, his voice softening to that of genuine concern, “Ye sure ye don’t want that drink?”
Legundo sighed, “I’m honestly tempted, Ren, but I doubt it would mix well with my meds. Besides, it’d be best for the town if I kept a clear head.”
His head felt far from clear. Thoughts of his dreams pounded in his brain, and questions about his interactions with Owen swirled through them. Owen had wanted to come in to talk to him. Talk about what? He might’ve been genuinely concerned for the doc. But he’d left when Legs had asked, was that out of respect? Or just boredom? What was he doing flying over Oakhurst? A reconnaissance mission? Or perhaps he wanted the doctor’s help? Was Legs just being delusional? Was there any hope for Owen yet?
“An encounter with a dark being such as Owen is no easy experience, dont’cha know, even for the strongest of hearts such as yeself, good Doctor,” Ren said, clearly clocking Legundo’s turmoiled brain, “If ye won’t have that drink do ye at least want to talk aboot it?”
“I…” Legs sighed. He wanted to confide in Ren. He really did. He wanted to let all of it out. But he couldn’t let anyone see him struggle. He needed to keep the town together, and calm.
He definitely couldn’t let them know how much of a hold Owen had on him.
Ren’s voice, as cursed as it was, was a big influence among the humans, especially the militia. If he was worried about the doc, then the whole of Oakhurst would be worried, and he needed to keep morale up, especially right now, “No. I’m fine. Thanks, Ren.”
He got up to leave.
He couldn’t break. Not now.